


this is the day (your life will surely change)

by ishandahalf



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Existential Crisis, Getting to Know Each Other, Groundhog Day but like 800 years too early, Historical accuracy: Wikipedia articles have been read, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Religious Guilt, Time Loop, same day over and over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29154807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishandahalf/pseuds/ishandahalf
Summary: There is more than one strange thing happening on the fateful day when Yusuf and Nicolò meet at the Siege of Jerusalem.The first strange thing? They kill each other, only to rise and try again. (Many times.)The stranger thing? They seem to be stuck reliving that day over and over. (Many,manymore times.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 58
Kudos: 118





	1. Well you didn't wake up this morning ‘cause you didn't go to bed

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Groundhog Day, everybody! There’s a reason I really wanted to post the first chappy of this fic today…
> 
> I vaguely remember an interview Greg Rucka did where I’m pretty sure he mentioned Joe and Nicky only killing each other, like, four times or something at the walls of Jerusalem before they decided they were supposed to be together. Meanwhile, the majority of the fandom up to that point was like, “it took them hundreds of times killing each other and decades of pining before they fell in love!!!<3”. So, was it a slow burn that took aaaages or speedrun in the course of a single day?!?! Well, my friends, I decided to channel the Old El Paso girl and ask - why don’t we have both?
> 
> Some caveats: I did a bit of research re: some of the historical aspects, but I can make no guarantees of complete historical accuracy. If you notice something erroneous, please let me know and I’ll be happy to correct it! And of course, we’re talking Crusades - so a content warning for all the associated messiness and violence that comes with that.
> 
> (Story and chapter titles are from ‘This is the day’ by The The.)

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Since first stepping onto the shores of the Holy Land, the days have begun to blend into each other for Nicolò di Genova. They are all very much the same - waking, praying, marching, fighting. Sometimes more of one than the other, but the sameness of the barren desert landscape slowly creeping across the horizon each day and the scorching sun unrelentingly beating down makes it hard to meaningfully differentiate one day from the next.

Until they finally reach the walls of Jerusalem. And Nicolò looks up at the fortifications standing tall in front of him and feels awe.

The size and breadth of the wall are impressive, yes - perhaps intimidating to some, but he has faith in his army, and in the siege weapons they are assembling, and beyond all else, their purpose. The walls will be breached and they will take the Holy City back, in God’s name.

He prays for it, for God to steady his hand in battle, for God to grant him the strength and speed to defeat the infidels, for God to light the path forward for him into the city and towards the end of his journey. Towards his purpose.

Nicolò prays. And prays, and waits, and helps how he can while the armies finish constructing siege towers and battering rams. His comrades ask him to bless their weapons, despite his protests that he is no longer a priest - the men insist, respecting the actions of a man who has exchanged his cassock for a sword. He obliges, and prays with them and over them.

And finally, with the preparations complete and the army set to begin their attack the next day, Nicolò prays as he lays his head down to rest in the camp that night. Despite his exhaustion sleep does not come easily, with the nervous anticipation of an upcoming battle thrumming in his veins, but it comes eventually.

So too does the dawn, and he wakes and prays again over his sword. He asks for sure aim and a steady hand, and as that steady hand makes the sign of the cross, he feels ready.

The siege of Jerusalem begins.

The battering rams eventually do their job, and portions of the outer wall come tumbling down. Soldiers run towards the openings, dodging arrows raining down and clashing with those pouring out to defend the city.

Nicolò leaps into the fray without hesitation.

He does not count the number of infidels he slays on his way towards the wall. He does not hear the clanging of metal on metal, nor the screams of the wounded and dying around him. He only focuses on the motion of his sword and the pivoting of his body, dodging swings and thrusting back in return as he presses forward. The obstacles in his path are just that - obstacles, not men.

It is not until he comes within spitting distance of the wall that Nicolò’s eyes finally meet those of an opponent. There, atop the fortifications he stands, tall and proud. Nicolò does not know what made their gazes lock, but when they do, the infidel’s posture changes. He straightens - in determination perhaps - appearing even taller, more resolute.

And then he jumps down towards Nicolò.

Their sights set on each other, Nicolò raises his sword at the ready. The bearded man stalks towards him with heavy, angry steps, yet moves gracefully, dangerously. He exudes power and confidence, likely very skilled with the curved blade he holds in his own hands.

But Nicolò too is skilled and confident. And so he steels himself, and lunges forward to meet his opponent.

Their swords greet each other with a heavy clang, converging in front of their chests. They push off and swipe back, the blades glancing off each other with the shrill scrape of metal on metal.

Nicolò thrusts to the side, and he is blocked. Their blades slide away and they spin to the side, before they meet again in the middle, then to the side, then above their heads and towards their thighs. One thrust is parried and the favour is returned, over and over and over again.

They are very evenly matched, and Nicolò spares a thought in the very back of his mind that he has not faced such a challenge in a long while.

Their breathing increases, and chests begin to heave with exertion. Their arms flex and strain, their wrists flick, their feet spiral as they move together in a deadly dance.

The other man sees a space where Nicolò is left open and slashes towards it, but Nicolò manages to block it in time. He takes advantage of his opponent’s surprise at his speed to find his own weak spot, twirling around towards an opening and dragging his sword down.

He draws first blood with a cut on the infidel’s arm.

He winces but retaliates immediately, predicting a move before Nicolò realizes he will even make it, grazing his scimitar down his collarbone and onto his hauberk. Nicolò retreats in time to avoid more damage to his chest, but he too now bleeds.

His opponent smirks, and it sets him ablaze.

With a clench of his jaw, Nicolò lunges forward and their dance continues. His hair sticks to the base of his neck, sweat pours down his forehead. The heat surrounds them, oppressive, but they do not stop. They do start to slow however, the pace of their fury catching up to them, leading to more openings and duller reflexes. More blood is drawn on both sides, though it drips and thins quickly, washing away with sweat.

Then the infidel jabs at his hip, catching him just enough to make Nicolò stumble slightly.

That is all that is needed.

With Nicolò’s sword to his right side, his left flank is exposed. The curved blade sinks in, running him through.

Their swords have been exposed, flashing in the scorching sun, for so long that they must have been warmed by its rays - but the only thing Nicolò can think when the steel slides into his warm flesh is how cold it feels.

The enemy pulls his sword back out and Nicolò drops to his knees, his left hand instinctively clutching at the gaping wound. Gasping, he looks up at the infidel who killed him, taking in the smug sense of victory in those dark eyes.

Shock is already setting in and his body begins to feel chilled, but the expression on his opponent’s face ignites a colder fury within his veins. If Nicolò is about to die then he will take one more heathen with him.

Praying one last time for God to guide his aim true, he summons his remaining strength and slashes his sword across the infidel’s body. He catches him across the throat, right under his thick beard.

He gasps (a horrid, gurgling sound) and flings a hand towards his wound to press tightly against it, before staggering back some steps. But Nicolò can see the blood pouring forth between his fingers, and he takes satisfaction from it.

With no more strength left, he drops his sword from his hand and falls backwards. Beside him he can hear the dull thud of his opponent falling too, but he pays no attention. Their dance is over.

And as he lays on his back, bleeding out onto the sand and looking up at the sun shining down on him from directly overhead in the cloudless blue sky, Nicolò di Genova thinks it is an oddly beautiful day for him to die.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

The first thing he hears upon slowly waking is church bells in the distance, just beginning to toll. He keeps his eyes closed, letting the sonorous sounds wash over him. They keep tolling for longer than he would have expected were he being roused as usual in the morning. He furrows his brow slightly and tries to count the peals. Twelve, perhaps? Is it noon? Odd that he has slept so late.

But other sounds slowly begin to filter into his consciousness now that he is not concentrating solely on the bells, and they prompt confusion. Screams, shouts, groans, the far away clanging of metal against metal… not the sounds of Genova’s bustling port.

And it suddenly all returns to him in an instant.

His eyes shoot open, taking in the bright blue sky above him. No, he is far from home.

The sun directly overhead blinds him for a moment, so he squeezes his eyes shut quickly to try and gather himself. Nicolò’s fingers twitch, and he feels sticky sand underneath them. His body aches terribly, but he forces himself to sit up. His senses are rushing back to him now, and he feels a great deal all at once. There is a coppery taste in his mouth, the stench of death wafts on the breeze, and his arms itch with a crust of dried sweat and blood.

He blinks, his vision clearing enough to be able to glance down at himself. He frowns at the puddle of red on his left side. The sun has baked it into his armour and surcoat, and it is now dry to the touch. His fingers keep on their exploration, wandering up slightly to where some tiny voice in Nicolò’s mind tells him there should have been a wound. A _fatal_ wound.

But as his fingers press through the gash in his chainmail, he feels nothing but unmarred skin.

He gasps, pushing harder into his side, only to find no trace of a mark where he swears he remembers the infidel’s sword piercing him.

The memory makes him jerk up straighter and he quickly looks around. The majority of the battle has moved beyond him at this point, the ladders and siege towers up against the city wall and his fellows making their way over and through the fortifications. He sees an infidel shoot a knight in the eye as he climbs a ladder to the top, only for an archer in one of the siege towers to then aim at him; hit in the chest, his body tips over the edge of the parapet and he falls to the dirt.

Bodies are scattered across the field, though some still move. He sees one of his city's crossbowmen struggle to get to his feet nearby, trying to use his bow to prop himself up; it snaps under his weight and he falls forward, and does not get up again. Beyond him an infidel rises, his robes covered in blood; he manages to stand and stumbles back towards the wall, only to fall when another archer shoots him in the back.

A riderless white horse gallops a few yards to his right, its saddle and side stained with blood, running away from the noise of the fighting. He thinks he recognizes a knight further down the battlefield - Matteo? Marco? - stepping his way around the corpses, stopping every now and then to stab a stray man who must not have been dead.

Dead like he should have been?

Now that Nicolò’s wits are returning to him, he realizes there are no wounds on him, that he is filthy yet uninjured. Despite the memory of an enemy’s sword through his belly, there is no physical scratch or mark on him.

It is a miracle, Nicolò decides. What else could it be?

He whispers thanks to God under his breath for protecting him, and then slowly rises to his feet. He sees his sword laying on the ground to his right and he reaches over for it, but then freezes when a movement in the corner of his eye catches his attention.

Beside him, an infidel is also rising.

No, not just _any_ infidel - the very same one who had plunged his scimitar into Nicolò’s gut. The same one who had fallen after Nicolò had slashed his throat in return. Yet he too has no wound to show for it, only the remnants of the blood that poured down his chest.

Nicolò’s mind races, and he knows not what to think. All he can do is follow his instincts, which drive him to grab his sword in his hands and lunge towards the other man. He too has managed to gather himself to his feet and has seized his own weapon, bringing it up just in time.

As Nicolò’s blade pierces the heart of the infidel, so too does the blade of the infidel cleave his own chest. Nicolò’s momentum propels him forward, driving both of their blades deeper into the other until they are practically nose to nose. Deep, dark eyes meet his own and he can see them widen in pain. He knows his own probably do the same, though neither of them cries out.

Some stray thought flits through his mind then, a wonder that there could be some small commonality between two foes from across the battle lines, but it quickly vanishes when agony takes the forefront.

As he recognizes the feel of the cold steel penetrating his body, Nicolò no longer has to wonder whether it had truly happened a first time. Then all goes dark.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

He wakes again to the sound of bells and the sun beating down onto him. The cacophony of battle permeates his consciousness faster this time around, and Nicolò comes to himself more quickly.

Sitting up, he quickly grabs at his chest. He distinctly remembers the scimitar piercing him, yet once again there is no mark to be found - only a gash in his armour and a surcoat drenched in blood.

“ _Santa Maria, Madre di Dio_ ,” he breathes, crossing himself quickly. His prior proclamation of a miracle had not seemed as such when the infidel had then risen alongside him. So then, what is this - some sort of dark magic? What has the infidel done to him?

At the thought, he quickly raises his head only to see the other man - no, clearly he is some sort of demon, what else could he be? - already lunging at him with a shout.

Nicolò flings himself to the side to avoid him, but the infidel grabs his arms. The two begin grappling desperately, rolling in the sand. Though the men are close in size, the infidel has perhaps an inch or two of height and more muscle to him, and he manages to use the extra strength to maneuver atop him. Nicolò extends an arm straight out, grabbing at the other’s throat to hold him off while his other arm flails to the side, trying to find his sword.

The infidel uses the hand that is not pinning Nicolò’s shoulder to the ground to reach into the folds of his robes, pulling out a dagger. Nicolò’s free hand scrambles, no hilt to be found, but his fingers finally touch the edge of something hard. He manages to grasp a rock and bashes in the side of the infidel’s head right as a dagger plunges down into his heart.

And the world goes dark again.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Whatever demon inhabits the body of the infidel, Nicolò is beginning to think it has passed its unholy curse on to him for it seems he can no longer die.

Each time he wakes under the hot sun there are no wounds left on him - it appears that no matter what the infidel does to him, even to the point of death, it will heal. He is stabbed and run through with the demon’s scimitar and dagger repeatedly, as well as with other stray swords picked up off the battlefield as they clash. He is pushed into the path of a panicking horse as it dashes away from the fighting and is trampled. He is struck by enemy archers when the infidel lures him closer to the wall for his fellow heathens to shoot at him. Yet no matter the means, his death does not take.

Unfortunately the same can be said for the infernal being he remains locked in battle with. He too guts the infidel numerous times, bashes in the side of his head, jams a stray arrow into his eye and through to his brain; yet he continues to rise again.

Nicolò has lost track of how many times the two have slayed each other. Two dozen, at least. Perhaps three dozen? They have been at it for hours at this point, but it hardly matters. All he cares about is striking down the demon in front of him, the one who must have caused this strange affliction. At least he is successful in killing his adversary every time he himself has been killed; he can take some sort of grisly satisfaction in that (though it brings minimal solace).

Raising his sword in a battle stance, he eyes the enemy with seething hatred. By now he knows the man’s face well, he knows the frustrated slant of his eyebrows and the angry twist of his lips. He also knows the swiftness of the man’s feet and the dexterous swing of his sword. By this point their dance is a familiar one, and they throw themselves back into it with no hesitation.

Nicolò thrusts his weapon forward, forcing the infidel to jump back. He pushes the sword aside with his own blade and then quickly arcs it back up in a wide swathe, making Nicolò lean his upper body backward. He uses the momentum to swing and bring his sword back around with him, only to have it clash against the scimitar once again, angry reverberations ricocheting up his arms.

They parry blows over and over, just as equally matched as in every bout prior. It will come down to the slimmest opening, a minor mistake that the opponent will have to be observant enough to capitalize on. This time it is the infidel whose keen eyes note Nicolò’s slight stumble on a stray shield, strewn amongst the corpses. In the split second he is focused on maintaining his balance, the scimitar swings up and into his ribs.

He cries out this time, both in pain and vexation, but manages to keep both hands on the hilt of his own sword. As he falls back he lets it arc up behind him, aiming for the neck of the infidel. Though Nicolò’s eyesight is already fading, he can feel the blade connect before the world darkens around him once more.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

He wakes again, flat on his back, and blinks his eyes quickly as the peal of bells recedes. He always seems to open them to find himself staring directly at the sun, and it annoys him that it will cost him precious seconds to gather himself and see properly.

Then Nicolò frowns, a stray thought crossing his mind.

Looking back up, he finds the sun directly overhead. Still.

But that cannot be correct.

He tries to cast his mind back a few seconds ago, to the bells. Had there been twelve again, for the noon tolling? He had not been counting, but that would match the position of the sun in the sky. Although that makes no sense, for he and the infidel have been battling for _hours_ \- the sun should have been far westward by now. He knows that much, despite his lack of expertise in charting the sun and the stars.

A chill runs through him.

Sitting up slowly, Nicolò takes in his surroundings again. He sees an infidel atop the parapets shoot a knight off a ladder, only to be shot himself and fall mere moments afterward. He sees a fallen crossbowman struggle to his feet, the bow he is using to push himself up snapping in half under his weight. He sees an infidel, soaked in blood, rise up and stumble away, only to be shot down by an archer.

He turns to his right, expecting to see a riderless white horse galloping past. The same horse that had trampled him once before, he thinks. Yes, there it goes, dashing by.

This is all disturbingly familiar.

Something twists deep inside of Nicolò, a gnarling, sickening sense of dread. This is worse than the feeling he had after his first reawakening. (Or revival? Reanimation? What to call this strange phenomenon?)

He holds his breath as he peers into the distance and hopes he will not see what he is expecting. No, no, no - this cannot be possible, Nicolò tells himself. His inability to die is impossible enough on its own… But there is that knight - Marco? Perhaps it is Marco - swinging his sword at wounded survivors, just as Nicolò knew he would be.

Now his breath catches in his throat, stuck, as a grim realization washes over him. It is not just he and the infidel repeating their personal bout again and again; everything _around_ them is repeating as well.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins! (And begins, and begins, and begins...)
> 
> This has been quite a shift in writing style from my last fic - in terms of genre, tense, time period… no lulz herein! - so I hope I’m managing to pull it off. Some kind comments are always much appreciated to soothe my poor fragile author’s ego! 😅


	2. You pull back the curtains and the sun burns into your eyes

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

From his position atop a parapet on Al-Quds’ fortifications, Yusuf Al-Kaysani can see for miles in every direction. Unfortunately, he does not like what he sees.

Fatimid spies had sent word weeks earlier of the arrival of Genoese ships in Jaffa, bringing with them not only construction materials for siege equipment but going so far as to dismantle the ships themselves for the wood. It had only been a matter of time until construction was completed, and that time has come all too soon. 

The invaders began their assault that morning, and already the outer walls have been breached. Waves upon waves of them rush forward, and Yusuf steadies himself with a quick prayer to Allah for protection before resigning himself to whatever fate awaits him.

Defending this city and its people would be a noble end to his life, if that is what is willed. He hopes not, but puts fanciful hopes out of his head for now and instead focuses on actions in the here and now.

His scimitar drawn, Yusuf weaves his away amongst the archers on the wall, tasking himself with shoving ladders away from the battlements or raining down buckets of quicklime on the climbers. If any invaders reach the top he quickly intervenes, deftly attacking with his blade and pushing bodies back down onto their climbing comrades.

When a battering ram breaks through a section of wall some yards to his left, he struggles to stay on his feet as the battlements beneath him shake. Grimacing as hordes of men climb over the rubble and flood through the breach, he makes his way over and takes stock of the situation.

Yusuf is not sure what specifically draws his attention to one of the Franks over the others - they all look very much the same from a distance, all filthy and wild-looking - but one’s gaze catches his own. He straightens, gripping the hilt of his weapon tighter.

Something in that look reads like a challenge, which he immediately accepts without truly even thinking about it.

He leaps down off the wall, descending towards the invader. Yusuf is a proud and determined man, and at this moment everything within him wants to channel that determination into making that man regret invading a land that does not belong to him.

The invader lunges forward first, and Yusuf raises his scimitar to meet him. Their two swords greet each other with a heavy clang in front of their bodies. They push off and swipe back, their blades glancing off each other with the shrill screech of metal on metal.

Yusuf blocks the other’s sword as he thrusts to the side. Their blades slide off each other, and they spin before they meet again in the middle, then to the side, then above their heads and towards their thighs. One’s thrust is parried, and the favour is returned.

The two men appear evenly matched, and a distant part of Yusuf’s mind appreciates the challenge to his skills.

Their breathing increases, and chests begin to heave with exertion. Their arms flex and strain, their wrists flick, their feet spiral. They move together in a deadly dance.

Finally seeing a space where the invader is undefended, Yusuf slashes towards it but is blocked just in time. He is surprised at the other man’s speed, and regrets the slight distraction immediately as it leaves him too slow to react to the invader’s twist to the side and slash of his sword towards Yusuf’s arm.

A small gash opens on his bicep. In the heat of the battle he barely feels it, but he does feel anger at the sight. He retaliates immediately, predicting a move before the Frank realizes he would even make it, and manages to graze his scimitar down his collarbone and onto his hauberk. He pulls back in time to avoid being torn open down the middle, but he too now bleeds and Yusuf cannot help but smirk in satisfaction.

His expression must have angered his opponent (which increases Yusuf’s satisfaction even further, truth be told), for his jaw clenches in anger and determination, and their dance continues. Yusuf can feel his hair grow damp with sweat, he can feel drops trickle down his face and get lost into his beard, but they do not cease their fight. They do start to slow however, their pace finally catching up to them. With their reflexes dulling, more openings lead to more blood drawn by each of them, though nothing so serious as to fell either man.

But Yusuf is growing weary of one invader monopolizing so much of his time. He keeps vigilant for an opening, and finally sees his opportunity when his opponent stumbles slightly. He takes advantage immediately.

With the man’s sword on his right side, his left flank is exposed. Yusuf sinks in his curved blade there without hesitation, running him through.

He pulls his scimitar back out from flesh and watches as the invader drops to his knees, one hand clutching at his wound. Yusuf cannot help but feel a sense of accomplishment at his victory, no matter how small or meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

That turns out to be his mistake. (His father has always scolded him for his overconfidence, and the man has always been wise.)

Not expecting the dying man to be able to summon any strength nor speed, Yusuf is not ready to react to the swing of the Frank’s sword up and across his throat.

He gasps, stepping back and instinctively flinging a hand towards his wound to press tightly against it - though a part of him immediately knows it will be in vain. He can feel the blood pouring out over his fingers, much like his strength is rapidly spilling from him.

Yusuf drops his sword, unable to maintain a grip. He does not feel the pain as his knees hit the sand heavily, nor as his body keels over and he falls onto his back.

And as he lays there, bleeding out into the dirt and looking up at the sun shining down on him from directly overhead in the cloudless blue sky, Yusuf Al-Kaysani thinks it a shame that he had to die on such a beautiful day.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

The ringing of the city’s church bells is a familiar sound to Yusuf by now. He hears them toll in the distance as he does every day, but as they keep ringing he frowns and thinks to himself that they are going on far too long for this early in the morning. It feels like they have pealed at least ten times, perhaps even a dozen. But he cannot remember the last time he has been able to sleep so late.

Forcing his eyes open, he expects to see the ceiling of his lodgings in the city. Instead, he sees nothing but blue sky above him and the bright sun peering down.

Temporarily blinded, he quickly shuts his eyes again and tries to focus on his other senses. His ears are assaulted by the sounds of screams and groans around him. His nose breathes in the stench of death. His tongue tastes blood.

With that, his eyes fly open again and he jerks in realization. Both hands grab at his throat, only to feel dried blood encrusted there instead of a jagged wound. Lifting his head slightly, he looks down at himself and winces at the sight - his entire torso is stained crimson, but he neither sees nor feels any wounds.

Indeed, he feels no pain whatsoever, despite now having a clear memory of his throat being cut. _Alhamdulillah_ , it is some sort of miracle.

Yusuf glances around, taking stock of the situation. He sees an archer struggle to get to his feet amidst the field of bodies, using a bow to prop himself up only to have it collapse under his weight. One of his compatriots rises, bloodied, and attempts to head back to the city only to fall with an arrow in his back. A riderless white horse gallops by, its rider likely knocked off by one of the Fatimid bowmen from the wall.

That thought turns his head back towards the fortifications, where the battle has moved. More ladders are now propped against the walls, more holes have been punched through by the battering rams. He watches one of his fellows shoot an invader in the eye and he then topples down the ladder, knocking down the man who followed him.

He must go back and help them, they are being overrun.

He lurches to his feet and grabs his scimitar, but a movement nearby draws his eye.

Beside him, an invader is also rising.

And not just any invader - the very same who had swung his sword and caught Yusuf’s throat as he had fallen, dying. Only he too is not dead. Yusuf is not about to step closer and check whether his wound too has healed; but he has to assume that is the only explanation for the Frank getting to his feet, much as he himself has.

So perhaps this is not a blessing from Allah then - unless the blessing is to be able to take satisfaction in killing the invader again.

Before he can act on that intriguing thought, the other man lunges toward him with his sword in hand. Yusuf brings his own up as well - but he is not fast enough to block the maneuver. Instead, the sword plunges straight into his heart. At least he too manages to impale the invader, whose momentum drives him forward until both men’s blades are fully skewered through each other. They only stop when they can go no further, pressed chest to chest.

Yusuf spares a thought that the invader has very odd, pale-coloured eyes - they are directly in front of his own at this point - and that the pain in them likely mirrors that in his own. That is his last coherent thought as the light leaves them.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

They kill each other, many times. The method or manner does not seem to matter, nor which of them makes the first strike. Inevitably the other matches it, and they both find themselves dying - only to rise unharmed and begin their own personal battle again, and again, and again.

When Yusuf finds himself on his back one more, returning to the waking world, he realizes he has lost count as to how many times they have done so. Many dozens, he guesses - after all, they have been at it for hours.

It is that rather innocuous thought passing through his mind that suddenly sparks his notice of an incongruity. It must be the notion of counting and time passing that prompts him to wonder about the bells once again pealing in the distance, and though he only started paying attention to them halfway through their song, the number he is able to count from that point does not seem correct.

Glancing back up to the sky, he frowns at the position of the sun. How can it still be directly overhead? He distinctly remembers it being in that position when he awoke the very first time that day, after his very first death and rebirth. He and the Frank had been fighting futilely for hours by now, meaning the sun should have made its way far westward.

Yusuf frowns, feeling a tremor of unease shoot through him.

Sitting up, he takes in his surroundings again. He watches an archer prop himself up with his bow, only to have the weapon break under the strain of his weight. He watches one of his fellows rise from the field only to fall back to the dirt when an arrow pierces his back. He watches a riderless horse canter by. Over at the wall one of his compatriots aims an arrow into the eye of an invader, and Yusuf predicts the knight’s topple backwards and his impact with the man who was following him up the ladder.

He watches all this happen, chilled with the realization that he had already watched it happen earlier. Yet somehow it is now happening _again_.

There is a need to pause, to sit, to reflect on this bizarre phenomenon and try and understand what is going on (if such a thing can even begin to be comprehended!), but Yusuf has no time. He knows, as is their custom by now, that the annoyingly tenacious invader will be rising again as well and setting his sights on Yusuf - and so he rises and reaches for his sword.

However, there is a delay this time.

Yusuf stands with his blade at the ready, prepared to react in an instant if need be; but looking over at the Frank, he can see an expression of what he thinks is horror crossing his face as he turns to examine the landscape around him. With each glance around he looks more and more panicked.

It seems they have come to the same grim realization then.

He can feel his curiosity start to get the better of him. Perhaps it is time to attempt to talk with his tongue instead of his sword, Yusuf thinks to himself.

“You are seeing the same things repeat again, are you not?” he calls out in Arabic. He does not expect the invader to understand, but his voice has the desired effect of catching the other man’s attention.

He whirls around, his sword raised - and Yusuf scowls. “We can fight later,” he continues, purposely quelling his instincts and not raising his own weapon. “I wish to talk first. Do you understand me?”

A glare and angrily garbled words in an unfamiliar tongue are his only reply, so Yusuf asks again - in Greek, then in Latin despite his rustiness. Some words seem to strike a chord with the other man, so Yusuf finally attempts Sabir. The Mediterranean _lingua franca_ seems to resonate most with the invader, who finally lowers his sword (though only slightly).

“You noticed the sun,” Yusuf guesses, gesturing up at the sky. “You can see that our day is not ending, that we kill each other and wake as if no time has passed?”

“Yes,” the other man scowls, clearly reluctant to be conversing with his enemy. “What dark magic is this? What have you done to me?”

“Me? I have done nothing!” Yusuf cries, indignant. “Perhaps it is you who have done this!”

“Why would I curse us in this way?” the invader shouts.

“I do not pretend to know what you idiot Franks are thinking,” Yusuf retorts, rather than reply directly - for it is just another question he has no answer for.

Perhaps the invader comprehends the insult, perhaps he does not. Perhaps he needs no further sign than the frustrated waving of Yusuf’s hands to incite him to attack again, and then the pair is back to their usual duel, conversation forgotten.

The sharing of spoken words between them does not lessen the invader’s rage; indeed, it only seems to amplify it. Yusuf manages to prolong the bout but soon finds himself tiring, countering with more defensive rather than offensive moves. It is then a stroke of bad luck that lands his foot on the edge of a discarded blade and he reacts, pulling his foot back but falling off balance as a result.

The Frank presses forward, plowing into him and pushing him down onto the dirt. He all but straddles Yusuf, who is barely holding him back with his sword (the bedraggled invader is stronger than he looks). He does not have many options left, so he reacts by headbutting the man looming over him.

The invader rears back and Yusuf ignores the stars dancing across his vision to press the advantage. He follows, pushing himself up and onto the dazed invader, and then rakes the edge of his scimitar across the man’s throat.

Those strange eyes - blue, green, grey? - widen in surprise, but quickly fade. Yusuf’s surprise lasts a few minutes longer. He was half-expecting another surprise swipe of a sword to his own side, or the last vestiges of strength being used to shove a dagger into his back. But this time there was nothing.

This is the first instance since they began their combat that they have not killed each other, Yusuf realizes. This is the first instance of one of them emerging as victor.

For a moment Yusuf does not know how to feel.

Looking down at the dead man under him, he exhales. He should feel lighter now, he thinks. Freer, perhaps. Surely this is what will end this strange spell that had befallen him? The fact that he has vanquished his foe without being cut down in return must mean something.

The sounds of battle rouse him from his contemplation. Glancing up, he sees the continued melee at the walls of Al-Quds and he realizes he has wasted enough time with this diversion. He gets to his feet and starts heading back to the wall, intent on joining the battle once more.

He does take one glance back at the invader he leaves behind - yes, he is still dead. He lies, unmoving, and does not rise again. Good, Yusuf tells himself, then that test is over and done with.

He catches up to the battle and leaps into action once more, managing to slay a handful of Franks easily. They pose nowhere near as much of a challenge as the cursed invader had, and Yusuf’s confidence grows.

It ends up being his downfall.

He is so sure of himself now that he has defeated a man with such skill that he becomes complacent, jumping into the fray and taking on two, even three men at once. And yes, he manages to dispatch them with little trouble - but with his attention on them, he fails to notice the enemy archers on a nearby siege tower.

An arrow pierces his arm and he flinches, but it is not a fatal blow. More arrows follow however, one to his thigh and one to his shoulder, and Yusuf drops to a knee. That is all the opportunity a nearby knight needs to thrust his sword into Yusuf’s back. As he turns to look at the man pulling out his blade, he half-expects it to be his familiar foe; but it is not, it is a stranger. A part of him thinks that it now seems somewhat odd to be killed by a different invader…

But that is his last coherent thought as he falls face-first into the sand. Bloodied grains enter his nostrils and mouth with his last breath, but he does not notice as his world goes dark.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Yusuf wakes on his back, the blue sky above him and the sun at its apex. He does not need to sit up and look around to know that he is no longer near the wall where he fell and died last.

No, he is back where he started again. Turning his head, he is not surprised to see his opponent starting to twitch.

It appears that defeating the other man had not broken this strange curse after all.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time loop, doo doo do doo… Poor guys, as if being stuck in a war isn’t hard enough already.
> 
> Many thanks to all who left comments and kudos last chapter! If you’re enjoying this, those buttons are right there, just ready for some pressin’...


	3. You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a content warning for this chapter, dealing with the carnage Nicky sees inside Jerusalem. If you’ve read a lot of other Crusades-era fics then I don’t think it’s any more explicit than what would be expected, but I did want to mention it. Avert your eyes if you feel you need to!

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Nicolò’s reawakening comes with a new sense of fury - both at the heathen for managing to kill him again, as well as at himself for failing to do the same in return. He tries to channel it, temporarily ignoring the fact that he has once again circled back to wake in the same place, at the same time, as in that first cursed instance. There is no point in looking around, for he now knows he will only see the same things he has already seen.

No, instead he rises, grabs his sword, and rushes over to thrust it into his similarly cursed opponent.

There is no fight this time, nor any words exchanged. The Saracen has woken and has an oddly resigned expression on his face (why might that be, Nicolò briefly wonders. Should his reawakening not be expected by now?), and is distracted enough that he does not so much as manage to reach for his blade before Nicolò’s own enters his chest.

He feels the satisfaction that comes with victory, and it slightly tempers the fury within him (though it does not disappear completely). Perhaps a part of him feels some shame at running his adversary through with no chance to defend himself - he has proven himself to be a valiant warrior throughout all this, after all - but he quickly tamps that sentiment down. He has larger problems to worry about.

Looking at the heathen’s body sprawled out on the sand, his blood still slowly seeping out around him, Nicolò realizes this is the first time he has managed to defeat the other man without succumbing himself. He breathes a sigh of relief at this, for this is obviously what he needed to do. This strange curse was some sort of divine test, where he was forced to relive his day and his battle until he could emerge victorious against what surely was a demon.

What else could it be besides a test from God? And now he has finally passed.

He wants to be annoyed at the diversion but tries to smooth the rough edges of his frustration. Clearly there is some sort of of purpose to it all, and it may not be for him to know. Instead he must trust that this trial was necessary. All that should matter is that he survived, and now he can move forward.

And so he does.

Sword in hand, Nicolò finally makes his way back towards the walls of Jerusalem without interference. He glances back once at his opponent, but he has not risen from his resting place on the field. Good - it seems that is truly done then.

The siege has continued without him, the army making progress in breaching the city’s fortifications. Nicolò leaps back into the fray, sword swinging. A curious thought flits through his mind, making him wonder whether any of these heathens he is striking down will also heal and rise again; but he banishes it quickly, without worry. Somehow he knows it is only the other one who was different from the rest.

He focuses on the feel of his sword flying through air and ricocheting off armour and cutting through flesh. He knows this well, and loses himself in the familiar movements of battle. He knows this, and he can almost pretend everything is normal, forgetting whatever strange magic temporarily diverted his day.

He reaches the city walls, climbing over the rubble of the battered fortifications and into the breach. Nicolò lets himself relish the feel as he finally takes his first steps into the Holy City, the culmination of the long and trying journey from his home.

But he does not have time to savour the feeling long, and he realizes he should not have distracted himself with such emotions. The city’s defenders still fight, and as Nicolò clambers over the rubble he is caught unawares by a Saracen hiding behind the wall. He has no time to raise his sword before he feels the impact of a blade to the back of his neck, and he falls forward to the ground.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

He wakes to the bells and the sun again, and swears under his breath. His trial is not over, then. Whatever the point of this test is, he has failed it yet again.

The realization makes him feel tired, exhaustion suddenly hitting him and seeming to settle deep into his very core. What is he to do, then, to end this ordeal?

Nicolò sits up, but does not stand. Looking to the side, he sees his opponent do the same. He thinks he recognizes the expression of fatigue on his face, and guesses the same reflects on his own.

There is no rush to grab their weapons and clash this time.

The Saracen is first to speak on this occasion, as he had done in one of their previous cycles of waking and fighting and dying. “You killed me, but you did not get very far did you?” he says in the pidgin language they manage to cobble together to make themselves understood. Nicolò thinks he detects a tinge of amusement, of smugness, in his tone and he bristles.

“The same can be said for you when you killed me,” he spits back. “Yet here you are again.”

“Here _we_ are again,” the heathen replies. “Tell me - you are back here because you died once more, yes?”

Nicolò does not bother to issue a reply. He only cocks a brow, thinking the answer is obvious.

The other man nods to himself in confirmation. “I did as well. Then this strange gift does not just occur if _we_ are the cause of the other’s death. It seems we still rise even if killed by another’s hand.”

“So it would seem,” Nicolò acknowledges, somewhat startled. He had not yet made that connection. His mind then latches onto one specific word. “Gift? You think this a _gift_?”

“Perhaps,” the heathen shrugs. “We are in the midst of a war, and it appears we cannot die. That seems like a blessing, does it not?”

“What sort of blessing forces us back to relive this pointless fight?” he argues. “That seems like a curse.” Or Purgatory, he thinks to himself, but does not voice it. He does not want to consider the implication of that.

“Maybe that is the problem,” the Saracen says slowly, as if he finds his own words distasteful. “We rise and try to kill the other and find ourselves back here again. Perhaps we are... not meant to kill each other?”

Nicolò’s instinctive reaction is to disagree immediately. They are enemies, they are on opposing sides of a war, they have crossed paths on the battlefield - what else are they meant to do? He opens his mouth to argue, but finds his words lodging in his throat.

The heathen seems to take his silence as possible agreement, and continues. “What of a truce? Temporarily, at least. Let us walk away from each other this time and see if we can break ourselves free from this cycle.”

Nicolò surprises himself by actually considering this proposal. He is not in the habit of letting his adversaries walk away unscathed; but fighting this man has proven to be futile thus far, so perhaps this is worth a try.

“A truce,” he repeats slowly, and cannot keep the suspicion from seeping into his tone. “You truly think this will break the curse?”

“I do not know,” the heathen states matter-of-factly, though with a tinge of impatience. “But what harm can it do?”

He considers this and realizes the man has a point. They can walk away from each other now and maybe break free of whatever has ensnared them, or they can raise their swords again and continue their ineffectual exercise. “Very well,” Nicolò finally nods. “A truce. For now.”

“For now,” his opponent echoes, a ghost of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Do not worry, I am sure you will have the chance to try and kill me again at some point.”

He realizes the man is mocking him and he scowls, rising to his feet. The Saracen does the same, but they do not move closer. It feels strange, to stand together like this with weapons in hand yet without lunging toward the other.

There is a moment of silence as they consider each other. Nicolò does not break it, only jerks his head in a terse nod as he then spins on his heel and starts walking toward the city walls.

The Saracen follows him, and Nicolò stops to turn and glare. He receives a shrug and a smirk in return, and his blood begins to boil at the challenging glint in the other man’s dark eyes. Nicolò’s fingers twitch on the hilt of his sword, but he does not indulge them. He instead turns again and heads in an easterly direction. After a few steps he glances back to see his opponent heading west.

Good, he thinks as he continues onward, losing sight of him. Let that be the end of that.

Nicolò decides to find his fellow Genoese troops. He had lost track of them once the siege had begun and his attention was diverted by his unending duel with his fellow undying man. Perhaps the best way to forget that had ever happened is to move forward as if it never had.

He makes his way into the city again, though this time he approaches at a different angle, and with his sword drawn. He remembers to expect the infidel hiding behind the wall and this time he is not caught unawares. He slays the man and continues on.

He moves swiftly, only stopping to battle any fleeing Fatimid soldiers that attempt to rush past him in an escape from the city, until he enters Jerusalem proper. It is there that Nicolò gets a better view of the city as a long street stretches out before him.

It is there that Nicolò suddenly finds himself frozen in place.

He does not consider himself a naive man, nor a squeamish one. He knows war is harsh and cruel and gruesome. A Holy War, however, would surely be different - a Holy War is righteous, is decreed by God.

But there is nothing holy about what Nicolò now sees.

The stench of death is worse within the city walls than it was outside of them, mingling with the smell of smoke as fires burn through buildings. Corpses litter the streets, but not just those of Fatimid soldiers. He sees the bodies of women and the small bodies of children, and his heart wrenches. He takes an involuntary step forward and feels dampness in his boots - looking down, all he can see is red. The streets have turned into rivers of blood, and he is wading through the remains of the slain.

His stomach churns.

Nicolò does not know how long he stands there taking in the horror in front of him. He is shaken from his reverie by some of his fellow countrymen rushing by.

“Come!” they shout eagerly, waving their crossbows. “There are infidels holed up in the Temple Mount, and they are trapped. Come help us finish them off and we will take the temple back for us!”

Their words propel him forward, but he does not follow them. Instead he walks ahead and his eyes cannot leave the strewn bodies he passes. The unarmed vastly outnumber any armoured men, he notices. Those too old to fight, those barely old enough to walk, and everybody in between. Many Saracens, but also those he thinks were Jews and some he thinks were even fellow Christians. None were spared. Why, Nicolò wonders. These were civilians, not soldiers; these were women and children. Why was there no mercy shown to them?

There is nobody there to answer his questions.

He wanders aimlessly, unable to peel his eyes away from the horrors all around him. He sees his fellow soldiers kick in doors and pillage abandoned houses, shouting in glee at some of their finds. He sees them stop and rip trinkets and adornments from corpses they pass on the street, taking the valuables as their own. He sees this and does nothing.

It is a nearby shriek that suddenly shakes him from his stupor. Nicolò’s attention is drawn down a side street, where a group of soldiers has burst through a door. More screams come from inside the house, and he realizes they must have found survivors hiding there.

He rushes over, though he does not quite know why. It ends up being meaningless, for by the time he finds himself in the doorway of the house there is nothing more to do. A woman lies dead on the floor, blood pooling around her. Nicolò’s eyes take some seconds to adjust to the dim light inside, and it is only then that he can make out two smaller shapes sprawled underneath her - her children, who also lie unnaturally still.

The soldiers pay them no mind, sheathing their swords and stepping over the bodies without care as they rummage around the house looking for food. Nicolò watches them silently from the doorway, and he cannot contain the words that escape him.

“Why?” he croaks.

“Why what?” one of the men asks, surprised to see Nicolò there, but seemingly unconcerned.

“Why kill this woman and her children?” he asks, unable to tear his eyes from where they had fallen. “They could not have harmed you.”

“Why not?” shrugged the soldier, unconcerned. “This is our city now.”

He has no words with which to respond. He can only take one last look at the woman’s body before turning and stepping back outside.

Nicolò tries to avoid his fellow soldiers for the rest of the day, not wanting to see such cruelty committed in front of his face again - though the vestiges of that cruelty are splayed across the streets no matter where he goes.

Eventually he comes across his company and reunites with them, for where else is he to go?

His countrymen have taken over one of the barracks, and while he should have been pleased at having a bed to sleep in that night instead of his dusty bedroll, he finds himself drowning in his thoughts. If his fellows notice his solemnity that evening, amidst their savouring the spoils of victory, they do not mention it to his face.

The rest of his day had been spent wandering through what remained of the city, and nothing Nicolò saw was working to ease the doubts that began to plague him. They were insistent, demanding his attention like the sting of an insect bite that compels one to scratch. What he had seen did not strike him as a liberation - it struck him as a massacre.

He kneels beside his small bed, closing his eyes to try to pray, but behind closed eyelids all he can see are slaughtered bodies and his eyes shoot open immediately. He exhales heavily and rises to sit on the edge of the bed, dropping his head to his hands. He spies his feet then, still stained from the blood he had waded through up to his ankles as he traversed the streets.

Crossing himself (for that is all he can bear to do right now, though it may only be sheer force of habit), Nicolò lays back wearily onto his bed. He does not think that sleep will come easy for him this night, and in fact fears what nightmares might come with it, but his body apparently has other ideas. A bone-deep exhaustion settles over him and he soon slumbers.

And he does dream.

He dreams of a land almost entirely the opposite of the desert that now surrounds him, and it is a welcome reprieve to view a land with lush vegetation and rolling hills. Across the verdant fields there are two women on horseback, laughing as they race each other. They are jovial and smiling, but there is also a power and seriousness to them, as demonstrated by the wicked weapons they are armed with. The taller, pale one has a deadly-looking axe strapped to her back while the other, the more exotic one, has a bow and quiver.

It is a strange dream, and Nicolò cannot say what prompted it. He can think of no reason why his mind would conjure up these odd women, with their strange weapons and foreign manner of dress. He finds himself wondering about this as he wakes, but his questions quickly escape him.

For he is once again distracted by the pealing of bells, and his eyes open to reveal the sun shining down on him from directly overhead.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being trapped in the house over a long weekend by a snowstorm may not be ideal, but it certainly was for my purposes - i.e. forcing me to be productive with fic-writing! Managed to finish off the draft of this fic, so hopefully that means future chapters will be posted a bit quicker than they have been. (Of course, I ain’t gonna lie - comments and kudos are also excellent motivational aids to speed along that process as well! 😅)


	4. And all your friends and family think that you're lucky

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

The look of suspicion on the invader’s face seems to indicate he is as pleased by the idea of a truce between them as Yusuf is in proposing one. He sees no alternative at the moment, however. It is clear that if they continue to fight each other it only serves to return them to the same time and place once more. And now that they have established that killing the other and escaping does not break this accursed cycle either, something else must be attempted.

After all, Yusuf does not desire to be attached to this barbarian forever. And, he consoles himself, he can always kill him later if this notion of a truce turns out to be folly.

So they agree to it, and begin to walk away without crossing swords. Yusuf finds it exceedingly strange that, though they do not walk side by side, they head in the same direction with weapons drawn - almost as if, for a split second, they are allies. That thought is quickly banished when the Frank looks back and notices Yusuf following him, and scowls fiercely. He almost reminds him of a wet cat; the feral attitude coupled with his bedraggled appearance is quite amusing to Yusuf. He smirks, enjoying the annoyance flashing across the Frank’s face as he glowers and stomps off.

Let him be rid of that idiot then. Yusuf watches him head eastward and he himself heads west, quickly spying a breached section of wall where he can enter the city.

He wishes he had not done so.

When he makes his way inside, the city is almost unrecognizable. Buildings burn and corpses litter the streets, painting the ground crimson. He steps over bodies, both of his brothers in arms and of civilians. There are defeated corpses of invaders scattered amongst them, but not enough. No, the majority of the dead Yusuf sees are not fighters - they are just the city-dwellers, the men and women and children who had done nothing but try to live their lives in a place that those bastard invaders had deemed was theirs for the taking.

That this would be the endgame of the Christian’s siege is not entirely a surprise to him - they had heard rumours of what had transpired at Antioch, after all - but the sheer magnitude of the carnage in front of him is beyond his comprehension.

Yusuf seethes, gripping the hilt of his scimitar tighter as he moves forward. The city’s defenses have been breached and there is no coming back from that fact - perhaps all he can do now is to follow the enemy soldiers as they push deeper into the city and vanquish as many as he can.

He works his way down the streets, trying to ignore the way his feet splash through pools of blood. If he comes across a stray invader, he channels his rage into the swings of his scimitar.

He does not make it far into the city before he is distracted by hearing his name called. Glancing down a side street, Yusuf notices movement - somebody survives, still moving, on the ground. He rushes over, and as he nears he recognizes Ismael, a kindly vendor at the market with whom he has often done business. The man is trapped under his toppled market cart, struggling to pull himself free.

“Yusuf! _Alhamdulillah_ , it is good to see you still breathing,” he groans in relief. “Please, can you help lift this off of me?”

“Of course,” he says, dropping his weapon in order to push against the cart. It does not budge, and he quickly spies the problem - rubble and rocks from a nearby burnt building have collapsed onto it, adding too much weight for him to move it alone. He tells this to the other man with regret.

“Then I beg of you, go to my house and find my family,” Ismael pleads. “They are waiting there with some others. I was to return to them with supplies, we were hiding as the invaders passed us by and we mean to flee the city. Can you tell them to go on without me? Can you help them escape?”

Yusuf’s desire for revenge and bloodshed ebbs as he takes in the fear in the older man’s eyes. “Yes, yes of course,” he agrees immediately, knowing that if there are survivors to be saved then he must do what he can to help. “Play dead so you do not draw the invaders’ attention - I will find your family, but will try and return to you.”

He rushes along the streets to where he knows Ismael’s house to be, though the destruction around him makes navigation difficult. After a few wrong turns and impassable streets he makes it to the man’s home, relieved to find it still standing. In more peaceful days they had previously gathered there for tea and discussions of poetry, and the flash of a pleasant memory amidst the chaos that surrounds him is jarring.

Yusuf makes his way inside, only to be met by a raised blade pointed at his throat - though it quickly drops.

“Tayyib!” cries a surprised voice, and Yusuf recognizes a few soldiers standing guard over a small passel of survivors, huddling in the back of the room. “You are alive! We thought you had fallen on the field.”

“I am too good for that,” he jests with a half-crazed laugh, before clasping his fellow’s arm in greeting. The notion of disclosing what had truly happened to him never crosses his mind (if he cannot discern an explanation himself, how would he begin to explain to others?).

They share what news and knowledge they have, and a plan is made to shepherd the group of civilians out of the city. Yusuf joins the soldiers in gathering what supplies they can from inside Ismael’s house, as well as scrounging through the abodes of their abandoned neighbours, before moving out. They will take the chance to escape now, with the invaders having passed through the lower quarters on their way further into the city. Yusuf accompanies them for long enough to ensure their way is relatively clear before explaining to Ismael’s family that he is going back for their patriarch. Then, grabbing the arm of one of the soldiers, he pulls them both back into the city.

They retrace the path to the fallen cart without incident, finding Ismael still trapped underneath - but as they approach, it becomes apparent the man is not still playing dead. Now his throat is slit. Yusuf closes his eyes and curses his timing.

“Come, there is nothing more to be done here,” his comrade says, reaching out to drag Yusuf away. He follows, but cannot resist one despairing glance back at his friend’s body.

Rage boils within him again, but he tries to ignore it as best he can. He can let it take hold and head into the upper city to unleash it on the ruthless invaders, or he can channel it into making it back to the group of survivors they are guiding away. He knows which he must do, if for no other reason than to honour Ismael by seeing his family spirited away safely.

Two men skulking through the ruined city move much faster than a larger group, and they make it back outside the walls and catch up to their group of refugees without incident. When they meet up again, Ismael’s wife (widow, now) takes one look at Yusuf and her face crumples, knowing what must have transpired. He places a hand on her arm in an attempt at soothing her, but he is not cognizant of what he actually tells her - he thinks that no matter what words left his mouth, surely they were insufficient.

He finds himself dropping back to the rear of the group. He tells himself it is because he is best-suited to defend against a rear attack should any invaders follow their trail, but that is not the only reason. He needs to separate himself from that grief… and, perhaps more pressing, he has no idea where to go now. All he can do is follow.

And so he does, escorting the group as they walk away from the ruins of Al-Quds. They walk for hours, slowly plodding under the hot sun. Their supplies are minimal, their water supply lowering by the hour, and they must ration it all carefully and take care not to rush and overexert themselves. That is difficult, flying in the face of instincts to flee as fast as they can from the slaughter behind them, but they manage to last until the sun begins to set - a welcome sight for Yusuf, who cannot recall the last time he has seen an evening fall.

The group makes camp, building a fire to warm them and settling on which soldiers will be stationed where for their watches overnight. Perhaps the fatigue from Yusuf’s endless days of dueling and dying show on his face more than on his fellows’, for it is decided that he may try and rest first before being assigned to the second watch. He does not know if he will be able to fall asleep, but he does not argue.

Laying nearby the fire, its warmth works in tandem with his exhaustion to quickly lull his eyes closed. And he finds himself dreaming, though surprisingly not of the horrors he had witnessed earlier. Instead he is transported to another place, an expansive green landscape being joyously raced over by two strangers on horseback. They are women, Yusuf comes to realize, as the focus of his dream drifts over them and their exotic garb. His merchant’s eye for detail takes note of the craftsmanship of their clothes and then their weapons, as he takes note of the pale one’s axe and the smaller one’s bow. He is intrigued, but it is the expressions on their faces that hold his attention. He finds himself slightly jealous of their smiles.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

The odd dream fades away and he starts to wonder why his mind would conjure up such a seemingly random vision, but he is then quickly distracted by the familiar pealing of bells. But they are too far from the city by now for their sounds to reach them, assuming the bell towers even still stood… So Yusuf realizes what that sound must then mean.

He forces his eyes open as the noon tolling comes to an end, and meets the sun shining directly overhead.

Yusuf lays there a while, unable to bring himself to exert the effort to rise, nor even to sit up. Instead he just remains still, blinking up at the sun, until he hears a rustle to his side.

He remains prone, but tilts his head to glance over to the cursed invader. He too has not made to sit or stand, but remains splayed out on the field much like Yusuf himself. And he too is staring back. There is something strange in his pale eyes this time - some sort of haunted look? But Yusuf does not care to parse it right now.

Instead he asks, “Did you die again?”

The invader blinks slowly. “No,” he admits, after a beat. “I did not. I survived until nightfall, and then I fell asleep.”

“And woke up back here,” Yusuf finishes, frowning. “As did I. This is… inconvenient.”

The other man huffs, but says nothing. Yusuf lets the silence wash over them as he continues to think.

He does not know what this means. Walking away from each other had extended their day - that was surely progress. Perhaps there is something they are meant to do, some sort of trial for them to succeed at, before their day can truly end? (Yusuf’s brow furrows then, wondering why he is thinking in terms of ‘them’. They are not a pair, he does not care if the invader remains frozen in this never-ending cycle.)

He utters a quick prayer to Allah for a sign, hoping for guidance. Nothing happens, except for the sun continuing to beam down on him.

No guidance, no matter. He decides he will just have to try to make it through the day again and see what he can manage, and so he rises to his feet.

The Frank startles as he moves, and then he too quickly stands, taking a defensive posture. Yusuf ignores him, not interested in restarting their fight. Without a word, he begins to walk toward the city. There is a pause, but eventually he hears the invader follow him. He does not turn to look back and check.

He makes it into the city again, this time expecting the abominations that will meet his eyes. It is no less horrific to witness than it was the first time, but he does not linger to gape at the destruction. Instead, he makes his way through the streets to where he had previously come across Ismael pinned beneath the overturned cart.

“Yusuf! _Alhamdulillah_ , it is good to see you still breathing,” the other man cries in surprise, surprising Yusuf in turn - for he stands a furlong ahead of the cart on the street rather than pinned beneath it. As he looks beyond him Yusuf can see the building that had previously collapsed onto the cart is still standing, though it is now aflame. He has arrived earlier than he had previously, he realizes.

“It is good to see you as well, Ismael,” Yusuf replies with relief, taking the man’s arm. “Come, let us return to your family and leave this place.”

“...Why yes, that is exactly the plan,” Ismael says, but begins to move in the opposite direction. “I am on the way to fetch some supplies, and then-”

“No, there is no time,” Yusuf insists, grabbing him. He does not want to let the man out of his sight. “Come.”

He drags him along, making their way back to Ismael’s house. They take a circuitous route, for Yusuf is loath to walk straight down the street and past that cart, lest the building collapse and Ismael is trapped again. Despite the longer path, they do make it to his house and reunite with his family and the other survivors.

The group makes a plan again, and again gathers up any supplies and sustenance they can find. Again they flee the city, making it safely beyond the walls. Again they walk until the daylight fades, and make camp.

But this time Yusuf argues with his compatriots and insists on taking the first watch. They concede, and he remains vigilant by the edges of their makeshift camp. Did they manage to travel far enough from the city that their fire would not be noticed in the distance? Did they manage to hide their trail from any slaughterous Franks who had not had their bloodlust sated?

He lets his paranoia reign, figuring it will at least keep him alert. He maintains this into a second watch shift as well, not wanting to rest and potentially fall asleep. He thinks if he can power through and simply make it until the break of dawn, then that will truly mean the end of this cursed day.

It becomes an internal battle then, between his wariness and his weariness. He keeps watch, but his eyes begin to feel heavier. He stands and paces, needing to move, needing to ensure he does not slip off into sleep.

In the end it is not sleep to which he succumbs. Instead a quiet whistle pierces the darkness, and before Yusuf can think to wonder what the sound means he feels an arrow puncture his torso. He shouts, hoping it is loud enough to alert his fellows of an attack, but the sounds of others screaming around him make him think it is perhaps too late. Another arrow, this time to the throat, quickly silences him.

He drops to his knees in the sand, and then neither sees nor hears anything more… until the pealing of bells wakes him again.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🎵 _This is the time loop that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends.  
>  Some people started killing each other, not knowing what it was,  
> And they’ll continue fighting it forever just because  
> This is the time loop that never ends…_🎵  
> 
> 
> (If you read this without the song getting stuck in your head, congratulations. If you didn’t… sorry?!)


	5. The side of you they'll never see is when you're left alone with the memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another content/trigger warning for this chapter - there is reference to a suicide attempt/suicidality in the last three paragraphs. Obviously nothing sticks permanently, but just a heads up.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

The days pass in a blur for Nicolò. Or, do they? He is unsure whether they can accurately be described as _passing_ when the same day never actually _ends_. He spends some time mulling over both the grammatical and philosophical implications of this at one point, because it is not as if he does not have the time once he reawakens. (If reawakening is even the correct term. Rebirth? Resurrection? No, not that, that has connotations that do not apply. One thing he is sure of now, looking down at his bloody armour and then at the corpses strewn around him, is that there is nothing holy about any of this.)

He wakes. He rises. He spares a glance at the infidel (to make sure he too rises? He is uncertain, but tells himself it is because if he has to be trapped in this hellish cycle, at least there is somebody else alongside him. And yes, every time, the other man rises too.). Then he starts trekking towards Jerusalem.

Depending on the route he takes, sometimes he makes it into the city unscathed. An approach from a different direction tends to bring about death sooner - once from a stray arrow, once from debris crashing down on him from the wall…

Nicolò now knows the best path to take him beyond the city walls. But that first look when he makes it inside, that first sight of the streets running red with blood, that does not become routine. It impacts him every time.

The streets, despite the carnage covering them, become familiar. Nicolò can navigate them fairly quickly now. The first few times inside the city, he rushes to the same house where he saw the soldiers kill the woman and her children. He thinks he can save them.

It turns out he cannot.

If he rushes there without delay and makes good time, he arrives before the soldiers. He tries to urge the family to flee their home, to little success - the woman is terrified of him, and he cannot blame her when he must look a sight, with blood-soaked armour and a sword in his hand. He cannot speak her language and cannot convince her that he is trying to help. Instead he figures he may as well use the fear to his advantage and push them from the house - better they try to run than be trapped inside with the soldiers on their way, he thinks.

It ends up not mattering - the soldiers are already coming down the street once he is able to force the family outside. He tries to defend them, to the shock of his fellow pilgrims, but Nicolò is outnumbered. He tries, over the course of a few reawakenings, to fight the men but there are always too many.

A surprise approach is no better. He takes a more circuitous route to the house, able to find a path that puts his arrival after the soldiers appear but before they can raise their weapons against the family. He is able to burst inside the house and take down one or two of the soldiers before they realize what is happening, but the rest quickly overcome their shock and overpower him.

A preemptive strike does not succeed either. It takes a few re-lived days and exploration of the surrounding streets, but Nicolò learns precisely where the gang of men will be and when. To his dismay they are always in the large group, so there is no opportunity to dispatch some of them when the numbers are more in his favour. (He tries anyway.)

Waking on his back, in the sun once again, Nicolò closes his eyes and remains still. Perhaps he is not meant to save that woman and her family. He does not know why he fixates on them, but attempt after attempt is proving to him that there seems no way to succeed there. Perhaps it is time to try something different.

Nicolò does not know what that would be.

His mulling over the possibilities is interrupted by the infidel’s voice, calling out from beside him.

“Did you sleep that time? Or die?” he asks, also laying on the sand and not bothering to rise yet. The casual inflection of his voice belies the graveness of their situation; if Nicolo did not know better, he would almost say the other man looked as if he were simply reclining and innocently basking in the sun.

“Die,” Nicolò replies tersely. “I have had no sleep since the first time we talked of it.” Too late he wonders if that is too much of an admission of weakness to his enemy, that he is unable to survive until nightfall; but he quickly decides he does not care what the heathen thinks of that fact.

It does not seem he gives it much thought at all, only nodding at that without further comment. Silence falls between them for a few moments until the infidel again breaks it, looking over at Nicolò and asking, gruffly, “What is your name?”

Nicolò blinks, surprised. That was not the question he would have expected to be levied at him. Indeed, until this point he had never even considered the fact that his enemy actually had a name. Something inside him twinges at that, but he ignores it. In the grand scheme of things it seems entirely inconsequential and so he replies, “Why?”

“Because I need a name to call you in my mind other than _Frankish bastard_ ,” the man scowls back. “And because I may as well learn something about the man I am trapped in this neverending day with. Perhaps we are meant to learn something from each other.”

“As if you could teach me anything,” Nicolò huffs.

“I did not say we would teach each other, I said we might learn from each other,” comes the snippy response, and Nicolò is not entirely confident in their patchwork of Sabir to truly comprehend the nuance in his words. He decides it does not matter, and remains mute.

The heathen must be impatient, for he finally says, “My name is Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib.” He rolls his eyes at what must be a blank look on Nicolò’s face, for he then clarifies, “Yusuf.”

“Nicolò,” he grudgingly reciprocates after a few silent seconds. “Nicolò di Genova.” He is unsure why he answers - this is no place for social niceties, after all - but decides there is no harm in it.

“Nicolò,” the other man repeats, practicing the slip of syllables on his tongue. “Nicolò, what do you do with your neverending day?”

“Why do you ask,” he replies, suspicious. They have not killed each other since implementing their tentative truce many reawakenings ago - is he looking for another opportunity?

“I told you - I am trying to learn about this problem that has befallen us,” the infidel explains testily. “I know how I spend my day, but not you. Perhaps there is something one of us sees or does that can help us end this.”

Nicolò considers this, but his thoughts take him back to his last reliving of the day, and the image - now all too familiar - of the woman and her children struck down in their own home. “Or perhaps there is no helping us,” he mutters.

Then he rises, glances at the infid- at _Yusuf_ \- and starts his trek back towards Jerusalem.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

It turns out that once Yusuf begins to talk, he has trouble stopping. Now upon their reawakenings the other man starts to describe how his last repeat of the day was spent. His descriptions are fairly vague on details, and Nicolò suspects this is not because he does not have the words (words are something the man seems to have in abundance) but rather because he also does not trust his enemy. The feeling is mutual.

Despite the lack of explicit detail, Nicolò learns that Yusuf too has died many times, on his way into, within, and out of the city. He has died by sword, by arrow, by dagger, and by many other opportunistic methods. Obviously, none of them have proven successful.

He also peppers Nicolò with questions about his own day. Nicolò reluctantly provides some answers, but he too avoids details and extraneous commentary. The first time he made mention of something heinous he had observed - he cannot even recall what it was by now, with all the things he has seen - Yusuf had scoffed at him harshly.

“You are shocked at the cruelty of your people?” he had sneered.

“Yes,” Nicolò had admitted, both to himself and the other man.

“Then you have been purposely blind. It should not come as a surprise to you.”

That time Yusuf was the first to rise and stride away, Nicolò taking more time to gather himself. That is what prompted Nicolò to begin to take different routes through the city, determined to prove his opponent wrong. He is not so naive to believe that the pilgrim armies were made up of entirely noble men, guided by the love of God - but surely the positive influence of those with good intentions would prevail over the rest?

But that is not what he finds. Instead, on each trek through the city streets slicked with blood he sees something else that further cripples his belief in the righteousness of their cause. It is not just the gang of soldiers he encountered first, cutting down an innocent family. There are more like them, everywhere he goes, ransacking buildings and defiling corpses and slaughtering any survivors they come across.

Nicolò sees it now, everywhere he looks, and each time something twists viciously inside of him.

“It is a surprise to me,” he gasps as he reawakens again. “The cruelty? The massacre? I swear to you, I did not expect it. This was meant to be a holy war, for the glory of God. But what I see being done by my army is not godly.”

Yusuf’s eyes narrow, and he shrugs from his place in the sand. Nicolò knows the emotion behind the gesture cannot be as nonchalant as it comes across. “And yet it was still done in his name.”

“That cannot be the same God that I believe in,” Nicolò insists.

“Perhaps not. But it seems that deciding that the god another worships is right or wrong is what brought you here and landed you in this mess.”

He does not like these uncomfortable conversations. He tries to end them as soon as possible, stating the general events of his latest day before rising again to head back into the city. He has come to realize that the discomfort he faces within the bloody streets is somehow less disquieting than the discomfort he feels when facing judgment from Yusuf. The other man may no longer be physically pinning him to the ground with a sword, but he manages to pin him with his heavy, dark stare.

Nicolò returns to the routine that has become so familiar to him; at least there he can fool himself that he has some small measure of knowledge and foresight about things. He enters the city and heads for the home of the slain family, hoping that one different movement or one different decision will change things enough for him to save them.

It does not.

He jolts back to life after having taken a sword to the neck. He remembers his body falling on top of the corpses of the woman and her children, her unseeing eyes the last thing he saw.

“Tell me,” he rasps out, now desperate to know if he is the only one of them trying to complete a Sisyphean task. “On your days, do you have a pattern you follow? Do you learn what happens when you do something, and then try to alter it the next time?”

Yusuf appears struck silent by Nicolò being the one to speak first for once, or perhaps by the fact that he is finally asking a question about their circumstances. But he eventually nods. “Yes,” he says. “I now know what will happen if I turn one way over another, or if I take a certain route or perform a certain action.”

“It is the same for me,” Nicolò informs him, then sighs, “But it does not seem that knowledge does me much good.”

“How do you mean?”

“I have spent my days - most of my days - trying to save a family,” he admits, unsure of why he is suddenly telling the other man this. It feels strangely like confession. “A woman and her children, being attacked by my people. I have tried many different ways to help them, to no avail.”

Yusuf blinks at him, appearing somewhat stunned. “You try to help them?” he repeats, as if the words do not fit properly on his tongue. Nicolò vaguely wonders if he used the wrong word, but does not think so. “You fight against your own men for them?”

“Yes,” he replies, looking right at the other man as he says this. There is an indecipherable storm brewing in those dark eyes.

“Do you think it penance?” Yusuf asks sharply.

“I do not know. I only know I feel it is something I have to do. Perhaps it is punishment,” Nicolò answers, haltingly. “As I said, I do not succeed in saving them. I am always too late, or not strong enough, or outnumbered. This may be God’s punishment, dooming me to eternal failure.”

“If it was punishment, I do not see why your god would have involved me,” the other man bites off. “There must be some other purpose to all this.”

Nicolò lets out a small snort in response, but says nothing. Clearly he is not a good judge of the will of God.

“I too am trying to help a family,” Yusuf admits a few minutes later, reluctantly breaking the silence that has befallen them. “Some days I cannot get them out of the city, but on the days I do, we never manage to travel very far. It seems you are not the only one doomed to unending failure.”

Their admissions of precisely how they have been spending their repeating day seem to shake something loose in both of them. While it does not go so far as to make all of their conversations easy, or even civil most of the time, a more detailed recounting of the prior day becomes part of the routine upon waking. The failures, however, continue as well.

“That time it was an arrow to my throat,” Nicolò chokes out, shocked he can talk when he felt the bite of the arrowhead puncturing his vocal chords mere moments ago.

“I was held down by a group of soldiers and drowned in the reservoir,” Yusuf recounts, a hand patting his curls as if he expects them to still be wet.

“This time it was a sword right through my stomach,” Nicolò groans, his hand instinctively reaching for where the wound had been. “Do you find those hurt the most?”

“Yes, though nor do I recommend an arrow through the eye,” Yusuf replies.

“I took a blade to the thigh that time,” Nicolò says, flexing his leg. “It took me a very long time to die.”

“I took a gash to my thigh many years ago,” Yusuf responds offhandedly. “Not by a sword, it was an accident on a ship. I was lucky, _Alhamdulillah_ , that it was not deeper or I would have bled to death there in the middle of the Mediterranean. I wonder if I still have the scar now...”

Nicolò pauses, realizing this is the first time one of them has revealed an iota of information about their pasts, about something prior to their battle. A part of him also wants to check his own body for past scars, but instead his mind latches on to the rest of Yusuf’s words. He finds himself asking, “On a ship? You are a sailor?”

The other man hesitates as well, clearly realizing the biographical point he inadvertently shared. Something inside of him must decide it is of little consequence, so after a slight pause he slowly replies, “A merchant.”

“Ah,” Nicolò nods. And then, for some reason, decides to reciprocate. “I was a priest.”

“A priest!” Yusuf exclaims with scorn. “No wonder you are so concerned with God’s will and punishment.”

Though that sharing of information is accompanied by derision, it seems to open the floodgates. Along with recounting their last day, additional details begin to colour their narrations - Yusuf taking a path down a street where an old trading partner lived, Nicolò pulling a maneuver with his sword that he learned as a lad - that slowly paint a fuller picture of the two men for each other.

Soon the comments move beyond offhand details associated with their days. Is it boredom? Curiosity? A natural consequence of conversation? Nicolò cannot say, he simply goes along with it.

“Tell me of your home,” Yusuf asks after one revival, to which Nicolò replies, “Tell me of yours.”

He learns Jerusalem is not this man’s home, but he stayed to defend the city after a trading trip ended and rumours of the invading army had echoed through the alleyways. He learns about the man’s home in the Maghreb, about his family. He learns about his family’s trading business, about the adventures the man has had on his travels. Each new fact alters the image Nicolò had in his mind about Yusuf, each new fact bringing with it a sharper focus.

Nicolò decides not to fight his curiosity. After all, whatever it is that is happening to him, Yusuf shares the same curse. If God saw fit to place this burden on Nicolò’s shoulders as well as Yusuf’s, perhaps there is some commonality they can discover, some clue they can reveal during their discussions that might lead to answers.

Answers do not come. Yet Nicolò still finds himself continuing to hoard the pieces of information that Yusuf drops about himself. He finds himself wanting to know more about him simply for the sake of knowing him. He did not expect to find the other man interesting, and learned, and amusing, and - perhaps most surprisingly of all - kind.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Nicolò wakes after a particularly gruesome death, cut down by the same group of soldiers he cannot seem to best - this time losing two limbs in the process.

He is tired.

His repeated day does not tend to make it to nightfall; he cannot remember the last time he actually slept rather than died. Whatever heals his body must also heal his body’s physical fatigue, for surely he would not be able to carry on otherwise.

But still he is tired. The same day, always ending in failure, is exhausting him.

“What do you think will happen if we simply lay here?” Nicolò muses, keeping his eyes closed. He does not need to see that he is back at their starting point again. Instead he focuses on the feel of the hot sun beaming down on his face.

“I think the vultures will come for us,” Yusuf replies.

The idea of not moving at first appeals to Nicolò simply because of the need for rest, but the more he thinks on it the more he starts to believe such an approach may have further merits. “What if that is the way this is meant to end?” he wonders aloud. “We have died by the blade, and every other violent way possible, but perhaps it is finally the sun bleaching our bones that will end this.”

Yusuf remains quiet, digesting those words, before he asks, “A surrender, then?”

The soldier in him still instinctively balks at the thought, and he shakes his head. “Not exactly, I only mean that… Perhaps our attempts at action, at trying to change things, are doomed to fail. God’s will cannot be changed, no? Perhaps we must acknowledge that, and stop.”

“An exercise in humility, then.”

“Or patience.”

“I am not a patient man,” Yusuf sighs, but does not argue.

And so this time they remain where they woke, laying in the sand. They continue their discussion as the sun’s rays beat down on them, but the uncomfortable heat is a preferable change of pace to the cold slashes of steel through flesh they would have encountered otherwise.

As a priest, Nicolò has had a great deal of practice remaining still. His brothers often called him a statue, for beyond his lips curving around his prayers, he could remain perfectly still on his knees for hours. He thinks of that memory now, as he lays on his back a world away from his homeland, talking with a man who has killed him, many times.

Yusuf is clearly not as practiced at stillness. He tends to shift his body and punctuates his statements with waves of his hands. It is likely this movement that draws attention to him.

Their discussion halts when they hear the clink of chainmail as somebody treads towards them. That kight, Marco, continues his rounds through the battlefield, and Nicolò remembers too late that he plunges his sword into any survivors he finds.

Without words, the knight’s blade is thrust into Yusuf’s chest, straight through to the earth beneath him. All Nicolò can do is watch, eyes wide, as the other man gasps and then coughs up blood as the blade is tugged out with force. Marco moves on, not even noticing Nicolò mere steps away with his wide eyes locked unblinkingly on Yusuf.

This is the first time he has witnessed somebody else kill the other man since their truce began, Nicolò realizes. It is the first time in a long while that he has watched the light fade from the man’s dark eyes. He feels a sinking, churning sensation in the pit of his stomach, and he realizes he does not like it.

He continues to lay there, watching Yusuf’s body. A part of him wonders if he will heal now, if he will reawaken as he watches. He does not, though he continues to watch carefully.

Nicolò does not know how long he remains in that spot, but he is suddenly cognizant of the fact that he cannot stay there any longer. The idea of remaining in place seemed a feasible option earlier, but he cannot endure doing nothing but staring at Yusuf’s corpse. So he rises. 

He looks toward the city but decides he cannot face what he knows to be inside the walls. So, on a whim, he turns and walks in the opposite direction.

He walks through the desert for what must be hours. Though the sun burns him and his throat is parched, there is an odd sense of relief that comes with not having anything to do but walk. All he has to do is put one foot in front of the other, and that is what he does. He does not have to worry about dodging arrows or swords or fighting his fellow soldiers or trying to save anybody.

He just walks.

It startles him when he sees a body of water on the horizon. At first Nicolò thinks it a mirage, but it persists and grows in detail as he approaches. It is only when he reaches the shore and he can feel the water lap at his toes that Nicolò stops walking for the first time that day.

He drops to his knees and makes a cup with his hands, leaning down to drink. The second the water hits his tongue he can taste salt and spits it out forcefully, followed by an exhalation of air that is a cruel mockery of a laugh. Of course, of course it is not potable! Why should he encounter something to ease his discomfort now?

Nicolò remains on his knees, looking out onto the water. There is no more walking forward. He could go back, he supposes, but to what?

And suddenly the uncertainty weighs down on his shoulders so heavily that had he not already been kneeling, surely he would have dropped like a stone.

What is he to do, Nicolò thinks to himself. What purpose is there to this endless cycle? He is in Purgatory, he must be.

And with that comes a terrible idea.

He struggles to rise, but manages. He decides to walk forward after all, further into the water until his feet no longer touch the silt, and then he forces his arms to stroke against the water, propelling himself further into the water still.

He floats more than would be normal, he realizes in annoyance, and curses the forces that cannot even let him kill himself properly. It is not easy, but he forces his breath out and dives, as deep as he can manage, and then opens his mouth to let the water flood in.

Nicolò hopes his lungs fill fully before he floats back to the surface. As things go dark around him, his last thoughts are that even Hell would be a welcome respite from this neverending curse that has trapped him.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is there some kind of irony in Nicolò finding it hard to get dead in the Dead Sea? Probably...


	6. You could've done anything if you'd wanted

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Yusuf likes to think of himself as a generally capable man. Yes, he is often impetuous and hot-headed, and it has gotten him into trouble (many times), but if his silver tongue cannot get him out of it, then typically his sharp mind can. When problems arise he does his best to solve them. If he cannot, at least he tries; he prefers to take action rather than do nothing.

This problem, however, seems unsolvable. No matter how much he tries.

It discomfits him, exhausts him, and enrages him. Some days in equal measure, other days not.

The days he reawakens after being too late to reach Ismael prior to his being trapped, or after seeing Ismael struck down despite his attempts to protect him, or after secreting his family out of the city only to be ambushed, are endlessly frustrating. He has tried all manner of things, all combinations of routes and directions and actions and reactions he can think of, to no avail.

If Yusuf goes to Ismael’s family first, they are able to gather more supplies that he knows will be invaluable after they escape the city and trek to safety - he knows by now which streets are safe to turn down, which houses are safe to enter before they are ransacked and burned, where to look for the best stores of food and travel necessities. But this means he is then too late to reach Ismael before he is trapped beneath the fallen cart. Bringing one of his fellows to help him move it never does any good, for by the time he is able to grab an ally to help they are either too late to prevent Ismael’s death under the cart or they are spotted by invaders during the attempts to shift it.

If he goes to Ismael first, to meet him and detour him around the cart altogether, they are often able to escape the city - but the supplies Ismael had been gathering, including the cache of extra waterskins that would be indispensable for a voyage through the desert, are lost to them. Yusuf assumes their group would not make it very far, especially with all the wells in the vicinity having been blocked or poisoned. He idly wonders how many days they would last before perishing from thirst - he does not know for sure, as he cannot make it past their first night. They are either ambushed and he is killed while defending the group, or he drifts off to sleep no matter how hard he tries to stay awake during the night watch.

He is, after all, exhausted. Physically yes, but perhaps all the more so mentally. Because the complete and utter defeat he feels at his continual failures is felt down through to his bones.

Yet it is the rage he feels that is perhaps worse. That he feels boiling in every drop of his blood, and despite the amount of his blood that has spilled on the sands there is a seemingly endless supply circulating within him.

He had felt better when he could channel that rage into stabbing and slashing at the invader - Nicolò, now, he tries to tell himself - as an outlet for his anger. That is harder now that he knows the man’s name, knows some of his background.

He has learned things about the man that have surprised him. That he was a priest is certainly strange - it is hard to reconcile the notion of the man engaging in calm prayer with the fierce snarl of his lips and baring of his teeth as he swings his sword. But he too learns about this man’s home in Genoa, and about his family. He learns of the uncertainty that had faced him in his future, of either picking up a censer or a sword. Each new fact adds greater detail to the image Yusuf has in his mind about the other man, as if he were painting a portrait and layering on finer and finer lines with his brush.

Perhaps most surprising is that he learns Nicolò is not as vindictive and bloodthirsty as his fellow invaders. His admission that he spends his days trying to save a family from falling victim to his own army had brought Yusuf pause.

Upon the initial meeting of their gazes he had thought the man’s strange pale eyes were cold. Later their eerie paleness had reminded Yusuf of a shallow pool, containing nothing more than a misguided and ignorant understanding of the world. The more they talked, however, forced a revision of his initial opinion. There are hidden depths there, he realized. Not a shallow pool, but a reflecting pool. Light bounces off his eyes so readily because the light, the good, is what he wants to see. So, perhaps more naive than ignorant, Yusuf had mused.

He decides it is a good thing, that this invader is different from the rest. If Yusuf is to be caught in this ceaseless day with another, he supposes it could have been worse. The man had agreed to a truce, he had agreed to reveal details about his repeating day, and beyond that, about his past. They did not explicitly speak the words, but somewhere during their neverending days they have come to a tentative understanding that they are trapped in this together, and so they will endure it together.

Does that make them allies now? Perhaps that is too strong a term, still. Nevertheless, it eases Yusuf’s mind to know he is not alone in this. Yet that too frustrates him, for now he feels he should not act out his rage at the man. He bottles it inside him as best he can, but that too is exhausting.

Perhaps that is why he does not move when Nicolò wonders what will happen if they simply lay there. Yusuf does not like the idea of giving up, of not trying to solve the problem that has befallen them, but he is so tired. Could the solution to their ceaseless day be as simple as waving a white flag?

It cannot hurt to try, he supposes. And so they remain where they awoke, not making any attempts to rise. That does not stop Yusuf in his attempts to try and understand, however. If he will put forward no physical effort on this iteration of his day, he can still put forward mental effort. Indeed, he finds it hard not to - he simply cannot stop the thoughts from running rapidly through his mind. And so he continues to talk - more so _at_ the man beside him rather than _with_ him - and philosophize upon the nature of surrender, action and inaction, time, eternity...

He is so lost in his monologue that he does not notice the Frankish knight approach on his usual path over the battlefield. When a sword plunges through his chest and he feels the darkness begin to overtake him, he supposes he will now find out whether inaction was the correct way.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Of course it could not be so simple as surrendering! He revives again, and everything is much the same - only this time when he asks Nicolò how his day had ended, the other man does not speak.

“What happened? How did you die that time?” he repeats himself, somewhat confused. Yusuf had thought they had moved beyond this reluctance to share their day’s actions countless deaths ago.

The other man only shakes his head, barely moving.

“Tell me, Nicolò,” he presses. “If something happened to mark your day as different, if something happened that can teach us how to end this, you must say.”

That at least prompts a reaction, but it is only a resigned scoff. “There is no ending this,” comes the melancholy reply. “This is all there is.”

He pushes with further questions, but is met with no answers. Irritation grows within him. “Very well,” Yusuf grunts, and he hauls himself to his feet. “Continue to lay there then.” He has no intention of staying until that damned knight comes around to stab him once again.

He moves away, starting back towards Al-Quds. Halfway there he glances behind him, uncertain as to exactly why, but his eyes return to their spot of revival as if a beacon draws them there. The Genoese man remains unmoving in the sand.

Yusuf frowns as he turns to stare at the city. He does not relish having to endure what he knows will only be another failure with those walls. If the priest can throw away a day with no purpose, why can he not do the same?

And so Yusuf turns and heads away from the city instead.

He has no concrete plan this time, only to get away. He manages to liberate some half-full waterskins off of corpses he clambers over on the battlefield, but beyond that he knows he is ill-prepared for a long trek. He does not care - he only cares to be anywhere else.

He finds it strange to pass this day with no aim in mind, and more so with no knowledge of what his next decisions will lead to. This is all new, and it is somewhat disconcerting. He decides his goal will be to simply make it as far as he can, for as long as he can. He wants to see night fall and this miserable day finally end, and the break of a new day across the horizon.

So Yusuf sets his eyes on the horizon and walks.

His stolen waterskins are carefully rationed over the following hours. He lasts until dusk, and then into night proper, where the cold air is a balm against the heat he had faced earlier. The briskness in the air keeps him awake, despite his desire to sit and rest. He knows if he stops walking then he will likely fall asleep and everything will begin anew. He is bound and determined to not let that happen this time.

So he walks. He walks through the night and does not stop.

His waterskins are empty, his throat is parched. He does not know how long he can continue without water, but when the sky begins to lighten and the rising sun starts to peer over the horizon, that suddenly does not seem like a problem anymore. The next day is dawning - he has made it.

He laughs, for the first time in what feels like an eternity. It is a strained, tense laugh but an expression of joy nonetheless. How long has it been since he has seen a new day? (How long has it been since he had last _laughed?_ )

Oddly enough, his next thoughts are of Nicolò. The other man was partially right, it seems - it had come down to not fighting, to surrendering themselves to the passing of the day as if being swept along in the current of a river. Should he go back and tell the other man? Has he too found the same success as Yusuf has, or would it be an opportunity for Yusuf to triumphantly gloat in his face?

He does not have time to imagine how that conversation would go. It is then that his thirst finally overtakes him, and Yusuf drops to the sand and fades away as the rising sun paints spectacular colours around him.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

After some moments of dealing with his disappointment, he tells Nicolò of this once he reawakens. He does not end up gloating - it does not feel like something to brag about, that he lived to see the next day so briefly, particularly when that fact ends up being meaningless. But it does end up being especially cutting, to have had experienced a momentary feeling of victory only to have it snatched away.

That feeling of being thwarted, together with Nicolò’s continued melancholy, leads to a particularly difficult string of days for Yusuf. The priest continues to lay there, refusing to rise and refusing to engage. Yusuf stops asking for details on these days, for what little the other man offers is always the same - he stays there, waiting for either a mercy killing from his fellow knights or to simply perish from heat and dehydration. He instead continues on with his own attempts back in the city - for what else can he do? The end results do not improve, and his resentment grows.

After an especially catastrophic day, where his attempts to get survivors out of the city through what he thought was a faster route resulted in the entire group’s gruesome demise, Yusuf wakes with a snarl. He pushes himself up, stomps over to the invader, and kicks him.

“Get up, you pathetic man! Do you intend to lie there for the rest of your days?”

“I do not see what difference it would make,” Nicolò sighs wearily. He still does not move from his place in the sand.

“It is cowardly. You should face what you and your people have done here,” Yusuf growls, thinking of the corpses he has to step over as he shepherds survivors out of the city, of the cries of the children as the refugees trek under the hot desert sun, of the screams of the escapees as they are ambushed. If those sights and sounds are fated to haunt Yusuf, he refuses to be the only one to bear that burden.

“I have faced it,” Nicolò replies, rasping as if it hurts him to speak the words. “I have seen it, and I have tried to stop what little of it I could. And still it goes on and on and on.”

“It does. It must go on for a reason, and yet you have given up trying to decipher it!” Yusuf cries, aiming another kick at the man in exasperation.

“I know the reason,” comes Nicolò’s halting reply. He looks straight up at the sun, away from Yusuf, as he says, “This is punishment.”

His words ignite a fury in Yusuf that surprises him. “Punishment,” he repeats with a low, bitter chuckle. Punishment would be well-deserved, he thinks, for the pain and suffering this man and his army have brought to this land. Yet by doing nothing by laying here, steeping in his own torment, is that enough? Is it enough that he resign himself to this strange fate that has ensnared them, trapping Yusuf into the same fate as well? _He_ does not want to resign himself to this yet, _he_ is not going to endure the torture of repeated deaths on a repeated day as some twisted form of contrition that he feels no need to submit to!

He yells all of this at the other man, striving to find words in their cobbled-together trader patois to express his rage. He thinks he lapses into his own tongue at some point, though Yusuf presumes the emotion in his voice is enough to impart the core meaning of his message. But Nicolò only stares with that unsettling gaze of his and says nothing.

“Very well,” Yusuf scowls, drawing his scimitar. “I can show you punishment if that is what you desire.”

He places the very tip of his blade under Nicolò’s chin. Still the man makes no move. “You will not defend yourself?”

“No. If this is punishment, I will accept it,” the other man vows, quietly but with surety.

Yusuf does not argue, nor does he hesitate. There is no need to draw this out, he does not want to be needlessly cruel. He plunges his sword down through the priest’s throat. He does not realize the force behind his thrust until he pulls his weapon back and sees he has nearly taken the other man’s head off. Would decapitation finally kill him for good, he wonders? At this point, he does not know if he cares.

( _You would care if you end up trapped in this day all alone_ , a taunting voice in the back of his mind suddenly whispers.)

Ignoring any regrets conjured up by his mind, he wipes the blood off his scimitar on a nearby invader’s surcoat, then proceeds to head back to the city walls. 

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Many deaths ago, ending Nicolò’s life brought Yusuf a sense of satisfaction; he finds that is no longer the case now. He does not enjoy the thought of being seen as some form of divine punishment, of being used as a tool of torture, of being part of some grand design in which he had no say. So, despite an inner fury still burning inside him - stoked further by his latest witnessing of carnage and his latest death within the city walls - he forces himself to remain in place upon his next reawakening.

“We have talked on this notion of punishment before,” he says, continuing their prior conversation as if he had not lived another day in the time between. “Why would your God drag _me_ into your suffering?”

Nicolò turns his head to look over at him. His gaze, enigmatic at the best of times, is for once easy for Yusuf to read. He can see pain and guilt in those pale eyes as he murmurs, “I do not think you are the one meant to be punished.”

“And yet, here I am!” Yusuf sighs.

“Yes, here you are,” Nicolò continues, surprising him. He thinks the man even surprises himself as the words continue to tumble from his lips. “You are not what they said you would be like. You are not some savage heathen! You are kind, you are clever, you try to help others. I daresay I would call you a… a good man. You have shown yourself to be so. I can only think God has placed you in my path to ensure I now know this, so I _truly_ grasp the wrong I have done to your people.”

He does not think he has ever heard the other man speak so much before, nor with such feeling. It takes him time to absorb the emotional rush of words, but as he does, Yusuf grimaces at the implication.

“Oh wonderful,” he draws out sarcastically. “I am so pleased I can be some moral lesson for you!”

The fact that he might merely be a pawn in this never-ending game, to be moved around at whim in order to serve somebody else, does not sit well with him. What sort of dismal doctrines do they teach in Genoese monasteries? _Christians_ , he thinks, with a shake of his head.

“I am not some lesson to be learnt, Nicolò,” he then insists, propping himself on an elbow and shifting so that he can see the other man better. Yusuf wants to speak these words directly to his face. “I am my own man. I am but a man, and as are you. I do not know why we two were chosen to receive this gift, or this curse. Call it what you will. Perhaps there is a reason for it, perhaps there is not. But I choose to believe that this is not punishment, and so there must be a way to put a stop to this day. And I know that such a thing will not happen if we lay here like the corpses we are clearly not meant to be.”

He says these words passionately, with all the earnestness he can imbue. He knows Nicolò is listening, for their gazes meet as he speaks and the other man is watching him intently. He hopes that the widening of those pale eyes is indicative of a realization, of a revelation - but when he shouts “No!” and makes to rise to his feet, Yusuf realizes that it is no epiphany. It is _fear_.

As he turns, he understands why. He forgot about that damned knight scouring the battlefield and snuffing out those who still lay breathing. It is too late to raise his own weapon, and he instead feels the thrust of the knight’s sword through his torso yet again.

As he dies, he thinks he hears Nicolò yelling at the man. He does not understand them as they speak rapidly in their own language, but he thinks he can make out anger in Nicolò’s voice. Beyond that, everything begins to fade away as the darkness takes him.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

He does not enjoy being run through by that blasted Frankish knight, Yusuf thinks as he revives. Clearly he is not meant to remain there, in the spot of their revival, or the knight will come across him as he has before. So, he rises and grabs his scimitar.

“I am not wasting my time in this place,” he says to Nicolò. “Have you come to your senses yet?”

The other man just stares balefully at him.

“Very well,” Yusuf snorts. “I will at least try to accomplish something.”

His words make Nicolò flinch, but he does not care. He focuses on his footsteps, on the swing of his sword, on his path through the city streets. He falls back into his routine once more, altering this and altering that in hopes that one varied action will be the key difference somewhere.

He also returns to the routine of describing his latest day upon his reawakening. Nicolò does not respond, but he knows he listens - and if the other man will still not rise to act, the very least he can do is lay there and have to hear about the damage his people have wrought.

A few more iterations of failure and dying have Yusuf at the end of his tether, frustration setting his teeth on edge. He becomes more experimental in his days - he has already tried countless small alterations to his usual path, what if he tries something more grand?

Instead of entering the city through the usual gap in the fortifications, he tries another. Instead of shepherding the refugees out and heading east, they head west. It matters not; each day still ends with Yusuf’s death. The only consolation, perhaps, is that Nicolò appears to be more and more miserable each time he is regaled with Yusuf’s latest demise.

This time he tries entering the city walls and heading in the opposite direction to which he usually does. Will this deviation be fruitful, Yusuf wonders? But he is drawn from his thoughts by a scream.

He turns a corner, following the sounds, and finds himself watching a group of invaders battering down a door. They burst into the house and Yusuf can hear a woman’s scream from inside, so he rushes after them.

When he makes it to the doorway and can see inside, it is not the scene - as grisly as it is - that sends a shock through him. No, it is the sense of familiarity he has as he takes in the soldiers standing around the poor woman’s body, bloody and run through, laying on top of her two children. He knows for a fact that he has not encountered this precise scene before, but something inside of him still knows it. This must be the family Nicolò has described to him many times before, Yusuf realizes; it is the family that he is unable to save.

And Yusuf has fared no better.

But he has no time to dwell on it, for the soldiers waste no time in noting that the man who burst in on them is not one of their own. They advance on him quickly, swords drawn.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

“I saw your family,” he says upon awakening once more, when the bells have finished tolling.

“My family?” Nicolò repeats, shocked out of his silence.

“The family you were trying to save, in the city,” Yusuf clarifies, realizing the vagueness of his words. “The woman and her children, and the group of your men. I came across them.”

“And yet you are here again now,” he sighs. “I take this to mean you were as successful at protecting them as I was.”

“They were butchered before I could stop it,” Yusuf admits, not softening his words when he sees the other man wince slightly. “And then they butchered me. But at least I tried.”

Nicolò says nothing further to his barb, but seeing as how this has been the first hint of emotion the man has shown recently, Yusuf decides to goad him on further. He begins to describe the scene he had come across in detail, as well as he can in their patchy pidgin tongue; perhaps it lacks the descriptive flair he would normally give his stories in his own language, but it should suffice. If the other man will not rise and face it, Yusuf finds himself determined to ensure he knows the scene still plays on.

Judging by the downturn of his mouth, the tension on his forehead, the way his eyes cannot meet Yusuf’s, he thinks the other man knows this very well. He finds himself distracted by those small expressions, those small hints at what he feels. The man is not overly expressive, but Yusuf’s keen eyes can spy these miniscule movements on his face by now. They seem to reveal more pain now than was ever visible when Yusuf ran his scimitar through him.

He is so preoccupied with his scrutiny of Nicolò’s face that once again he does not notice that infernal knight approaching with his sword in hand.

He starts to roll over so he can grab his scimitar, but as he does so he knows he will be too late. He braces for another death blow, but is instead surprised by the sound of steel on steel.

Glancing up, Yusuf is taken aback when he sees Nicolò on his feet beside him, his sword extended over Yusuf’s body to block the knight’s blow. The knight seems equally shocked - or more baffled, perhaps - and shouts out what can only be a query of what the hell Nicolò is doing, spoken in their own language.

Whatever Nicolò says in return seems to escalate the situation, and the two men begin to clash. Yusuf rolls out of the way and rises, but by the time he stands at the ready, the fight is over. Nicolò has driven his sword through his fellow soldier, who crumples to the ground. Nicolò drops to his knees beside him.

Yusuf stands there silently, taking in the strange tableau. Nicolò has protected him, has struck down one of his fellows in his defense, and Yusuf finds himself uncertain of how to respond. The same can be said of Nicolò it seems, for he remains in place, silent and unmoving.

He waits a few moments, until it becomes clear there will be no further reaction from the other man. Nicolò appears lost in his thoughts, his gaze fixed on the red cross emblazoned across the fallen knight’s chest, soaking through with blood.

He has usually been the one to break these silences before, but this instance seems more momentous. He finds himself, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words.

All Yusuf can think to do is walk over and extend his hand.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like sands through the hourglass, so is the time loop of our day...


	7. You smile and think how much you've changed

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Nicolò cannot tear his eyes away from the stained cross emblazoned across Marco’s chest. A fitting image, he thinks; a symbol once holy to him, now sullied. By his own hand, moreover.

But it is another hand that breaks through his reverie.

He blinks when Yusuf’s hand extends into his field of vision, not entirely sure what he is seeing. It takes him some moments to force his gaze to move up the man’s arm, then to his face. He does not think, in the time since their first encounter, that he has seen him wear such an expression. Nicolò knows by now that the other man’s face does not hide his emotions well, and it seems that many are fighting for dominance in this moment. He thinks he sees confusion, gratefulness, anger, pity… His expression finally transitions to exasperation, as he pointedly glances over to his hand, still extended and waiting.

“You did not have to defend me,” Yusuf says. “But you did. Because it is not the nature of good men to simply do nothing. And I think, despite your role in this war, that you too are a good man. So, come - stop doing nothing, and act.”

The gnawing sense of guilt and shame that has encumbered Nicolò since he first entered Jerusalem’s walls continues to press down on him, so much so that he does not know whether he has the strength to rise from his knees. However, the urge to take Yusuf’s hand overshadows it all.

And so he reaches up and clasps it.

He does not need to summon the strength to stand for Yusuf hauls him to his feet, and Nicolò realizes this is the first time they have touched each other without violent intention. Yusuf’s hand is warm, holding his own firmly yet gently. He can feel calluses on his palms from his sword, but also more well-worn ones on his fingers - perhaps from holding a quill. (He can recall, he thinks, Yusuf making mention of writing poetry. There is something to be said here around the juxtaposition of these signs of both a soldier and a poet, of strength and gentleness, but he is no poet himself and cannot bring coherence to such thoughts right now.)

Nicolò stands there, staring at their hands clutching each other’s, for what is perhaps too long; but the other man still says nothing. He waits, oddly quiet, until Nicolò can find it in himself to speak.

“I think,” he says, “That you are right. About some things. I do not think that I am a good man with what I have done, but you are right that a good man does not do nothing. And if I am not a good man then at least I can attempt to be.”

And with that he squeezes Yusuf’s hand, savouring its warmth for one second longer, before dropping it. He reaches for his sword and turns, finally making his way back towards the city walls. He does not need to glance behind him to know that Yusuf follows.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

He returns to his routine of entering the city, trying (and failing) to save the woman and her children, dying, and then doing it all over again. Both men also return to their practice of narrating their latest attempts, but also surprise each other by beginning to offer helpful advice.

Yusuf teaches Nicolò how to say some key phrases in Arabic, to try and reassure the woman when he encounters her. He knows, based on Yusuf’s jibes during his tutoring, that his accent is atrocious. At first when he makes his renewed attempts at speaking to the woman he thinks this may be the problem, but quickly realizes that no matter his (pitiful) attempts at speaking her language, it is likely the look of him - pale, frantic, covered in bloodstains - that will take precedence in her mind. No matter - he still tries, and with each relived day he seems to make some small bit of progress with her, so he feels slightly better for his attempts.

Nicolò too makes a suggestion to Yusuf on how to help his merchant friend trapped under the cart, recalling a time back in Genoa when a horse-drawn cart had toppled over onto one of his parishioners. He had been quickly summoned to give the man last rites, and as he had done so he had seen others around him fashion a lever and fulcrum out of nearby materials from the docks to push the cart off of the man. (He decides to avoid recounting the part of the tale where the man subsequently died of the injuries to his crushed legs; that is hardly the point.) Yusuf is able to apply this lesson during his rescue attempts, though while he was able to free his friend the end result is still him waking up in the sand beside Nicolò.

They continue in this vein, conversation coming easier between them now. The other’s routines become familiar to them, both making suggestions on what to try, and quickly learning what combination of actions will lead to which results.

“It is helpful,” Yusuf says after one such debrief, “to be able to talk on this with someone.”

“Yes,” Nicolò agrees, without hesitation. “I am glad I am not alone in this.”

He looks over at Yusuf as he says this, and though he sees agreement on this face, he thinks he can too see the beginnings of a small smile start to curl the corner of his mouth. It is quickly chased away by pursed lips, however, as his brow furrows. “I wonder…” he begins to muse.

“What?”

“...What if we do not face our challenges alone?” Yusuf asks, almost hesitantly. “Perhaps we may be more successful if we were to combine our efforts?” It does not seem to be the idea that gives him pause, but rather what Nicolò’s reaction to it will be.

He blinks, briefly thinking on it. Then, without a word, he rises and walks closer to the other man. This time he is the one to extend his hand. He is temporarily distracted by the full smile that bursts onto Yusuf’s face at this, and how it changes the man’s visage completely. Then he is distracted again by the feel of Yusuf’s hand in his own, but manages to shake it off to remember to pull the other man to his feet.

This time, the two men turn in tandem and walk toward the city walls side by side.

They agree to head for the family first, their situation being more dire. The pair make it to the house before the soldiers do; they burst inside and Yusuf quickly begins talking to the woman in their shared tongue, making what Nicolò assumes are apologies and pleas to leave. There is more resistance from her than he would have expected, but at the many terrified glances she casts his way, he realizes that his presence there does them no favours.

He turns and heads for the door, stepping outside. It is then that he sees the group of soldiers already coming towards him. “Yusuf!” he shouts in warning, drawing his sword.

Nicolò hears Yusuf rush the woman and her children out of the house, urging them away in the opposite direction. The soldiers see this and begin to run at them, but Nicolò stands his ground. He assumes Yusuf will escort the family away and he is prepared to hold off the soldiers alone to buy him some time. That is why he is shocked when instead Yusuf orders the family to flee and then turns to stand beside Nicolò, drawing his own weapon.

He has no time to ask why the other man stayed behind before they are beset upon by the soldiers. Instead he focuses on the fight, and he realizes that Yusuf was correct - it is easier when he is not alone. Though they are outnumbered, taking on the group when he has somebody fighting beside him is less daunting. He spares a thought to how it should feel strange, the two of them battling side by side now, but instead it feels natural. In their countless duels against each other they have learnt how the other moves - that knowledge still holds, only now they use it to predict how to divvy up the combatants between them, how to duck under a sword swing as it lands on another’s armour, how to deflect a blade before it can land on the other.

It is impressive, but it is not enough. One of the knights slips past them and makes to chase the family, and Yusuf lunges after him. He tackles the soldier and brings them both to the ground, and as his attention focuses on pinning the soldier so he cannot get away that means he cannot defend himself as another’s sword aims for his back. Nicolò sees this and shouts, but with his own weapon already engaged, he can do nothing but watch as a blade plunges between Yusuf’s shoulders.

The last time he watched Yusuf be killed like this, by Marco on the battlefield outside the city walls, he did not enjoy it. This time it feels infinitely worse. He feels a horrendous rage erupt inside him, and he lets out a furious snarl as he pushes his current opponent back and swiftly finishes him off with a sword to his gut. He then turns and practically throws himself at the knight standing over Yusuf’s body, toppling them both.

It is not a smart strategy, for while they both grapple on the ground Nicolò can hear the remaining men surround them and he knows they are about to each drive their swords down on him. He does not care. He slits the throat of the soldier underneath him and then lets his death come.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

“That did not work very well,” Yusuf states wryly when they wake again.

“No,” Nicolò agrees, wincing at the memory. “But I think we can do better this time.”

And so they do. Much like their prior efforts, the days continue with one variable altered each time to determine its impact on the day. It is still a slow, grueling process, but somehow less so now that they make these attempts together.

They learn that allowing the woman - Aisha, Yusuf learns - to see Nicolò leads to immediate distrust and wastes precious time when convincing her that they wish to help. They learn that attempting to ambush the soldiers before they reach her home is messy, and only draws the attention of more soldiers passing by. They learn that diverting to catch Ismael before he is caught under the fallen debris saves him, but they are then too late to save Aisha and her family. They learn that if they first rush Aisha and her children from her home before sneaking through the streets towards Ismael, the two of them can lift the cart from him but not before other soldiers spy them on the street and attack.

It is a puzzle, where the pieces must be aligned just so, in specific combinations. And so they keep trying.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

“I have an idea,” Nicolò muses, after they revive once again. He is hesitant to breathe life to the idea in his mind; he finds their attempts in the city, no matter how dismally they end, are easier to bear when Yusuf is at his side. However, they have seemingly exhausted the combination of ways they can alter going through their day together, and he can think of no other alternative at this point.

“Tell me,” Yusuf replies without hesitation, and listens in earnest as Nicolò struggles to find some of the words he needs. But between the two of them they manage to make a plan understood enough by them both, and Nicolò is relieved - not surprised at this point - that the other man is in agreement. It speaks to the progress between them, he thinks. No, more than that - for they have already progressed far beyond where they were when they first crossed swords. Perhaps it is now trust? Dare he think in those terms?

He hopes for it, certainly. Whether trust is truly present or not, it will be necessary for his plan. He will put his faith in that, he supposes. And so they discuss the details, planning out their moves as carefully as they can.

They spend so much time in their discussion that they hear Marco the knight approach and they glance at each other, knowing what is to come. Wordlessly an agreement passes between them that they will let this occur, to prompt a restart to their day once more so they can then put their plan into action.

Nicolò has to look away when Marco stabs Yusuf, but does not stop himself from shouting and charging at the man once he does so. He does not bring his weapon up to defend himself when Marco’s sword swings for him, and he welcomes the sting of the wound and the darkness that ushers him into its embrace.

He is ready for the day to begin anew.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

When he hears the bells begin to toll, Nicolò wastes no time. He forces himself to his feet and grabs his sword, and beside him Yusuf does the same. Together the two men rush for Jerusalem’s walls.

When they enter the city, they pause. This is the test - do they trust each other enough to split up and work together, though separately, towards their common purpose?

They look to each other. There is a grim determination on Yusuf’s face that Nicolò feels must be mirrored on his own. No words need to be spoken; they nod, and then rush off in opposite directions.

Nicolò does trust the other man, he realizes. He trusts him to head to Aisha’s home and calm her in their shared tongue, just as Yusuf trusts him to go and guide Ismael towards the supplies he is meant to gather. It is a strange and powerful feeling to be imbued with such faith despite his prior actions, and Nicolò is desperate not to squander it. So he focuses on the plan they have fashioned, resolving to enact it down to the minute.

He follows the path Yusuf described to him to reach his merchant friend. He recognizes the man from Yusuf’s tales and approaches him with his sword sheathed and hands open in front of him, saying “Peace” in the man’s own tongue. He is understandably frightened, but Nicolò follows Yusuf’s instructions on what to tell him - that Yusuf has sent him, that he will guide him to get the waterskins he is collecting for their escape from the city, and that he must then follow a specific route to return to his home where he is to wait. Thankfully the merchant is able to communicate in Sabir with him, and even more thankfully, the man believes him quickly. Such is the power of Yusuf Al-Kaysani’s good name, Nicolò reflects.

He does not have long to tarry; he escorts Ismael part of the way, knowing which streets soldiers will be walking across and which will be empty. On the instance that they cannot avoid the invaders, he draws his sword and tells Ismael to play dead as he pretends to thrust his sword through the man’s gut. He hears the other soldiers cheer and proceed on their way into the upper city, and ignores the questions in Ismael’s eyes - there is no time for those now.

He has led the man past the most dangerous point - he reiterates his earlier instructions to him on what to do next, and then he rushes away, hoping the timing will still work in their favour.

It does, and Nicolò reaches the street where Aisha’s home sits immediately after the soldiers arrive. They do not notice him round the corner behind them, their attention focused on the enemy warrior standing in the doorway of the house. Yusuf’s scimitar is drawn and he is taunting them, his jeers covering the slight sounds Nicolò makes as he sneaks up behind the men.

Before they are even aware, his sword strikes across the necks of two soldiers. Their bodies falling to the street alerts the others, but Nicolò is already slashing at a third man. The group attacks, splitting their attention between Nicolò and Yusuf - though not evenly. Yusuf’s position in the doorway leaves him less room to maneuver, but also leaves less room for more than two knights to crowd lest they hit each other with the swings of their swords. The remaining three men surround Nicolò, who does his best to deflect their strikes.

He cannot easily land any killing blows without leaving himself open to one as well, but he does his best. He takes some jabs, but his goal is simply to avoid a fatal one; any other wounds will heal soon enough. All he has to do is keep them occupied long enough for Yusuf to dispatch the men near the door.

It does not take long, and again their timing is perfect. Nicolò glimpses Yusuf leaping over two bodies and towards his battle circle, and takes the risk - he plunges his sword into one of the knights, leaving his left flank exposed. He does not flinch as a soldier’s sword aims to strike it, for he knows a scimitar will momentarily be in place to parry.

And it is.

Nicolò finishes off the knight in front of him as Yusuf steps in to join him, and a minute later the street is unmoving save for the two of them. This is much more satisfying, Nicolò thinks as he gazes over the corpses of his former brothers-in-arms, than running his sword through Yusuf.

Glancing at the other man, he takes him in. There are new bloodstains splashed across him but he can see no open wounds. “You are not hurt?” he asks, to confirm.

“I am already healed,” he replies, casting a similarly searching look over Nicolò’s body. “And you?”

“Good,” Nicolò nods, then gestures to the house. “Are you ready?”

Yusuf turns and heads back into the house, calling for the family to emerge. Aisha and her children come forth, and Nicolò does not see the same fear and apprehension on her face as on the days before; he wonders what Yusuf told her of him. Nevertheless, he does not want to make her more uncomfortable so he does not engage. Instead he gestures to them to come, leading them away down the street.

They make it to Ismael’s house without incident, relieved to find the man there. Between him and Yusuf both vouching for Nicolò, he thinks his presence is tolerated (albeit tentatively) more readily by the group than it would have been otherwise. That is good, for they do not have time to linger. The men quickly scour the surrounding houses for supplies - if they are curious as to how Yusuf is able to point them directly to the most useful caches, they do not question it - and then the group is ready to make their move.

Nicolò leads again. He knows, from Yusuf’s directions, which is the safest path to escape the city, but still insists on putting himself out front so as to be the one any straggling invaders might see rounding a corner, in the hopes that they will simply ignore him. The precaution is not needed; Yusuf’s many prior iterations at leading the group have been useful, and they make it back through the walls unaccosted.

It is only then, as they put distance between them and the city, that Nicolò falls back and lets one of the other men take the lead; he has no idea where to go now.

Yusuf weaves his way through the group and starts walking alongside him. “Your plan worked,” he says, the corners of his mouth once again seemingly fighting a smile.

“I am glad,” he answers, relieved. And then, looking over at the other man, he adds, “You did well.”

“So did you,” Yusuf acknowledges with a nod. “We worked well together.”

“We did,” Nicolò agrees, but cannot prevent himself from wryly adding, “But the same could be said for anyone who has an infinite number of tries to do a task correctly.”

“I thought priests were meant to instill hope,” Yusuf snorts, rolling his eyes before passing over a waterskin. “If I give you this, would you describe it as half-full or half-empty?”

Nicolò takes the waterskin, regarding it with surprise. Yusuf inclines his head towards it, and so Nicolò takes a drink. The action feels somewhat intimate, to share it with the other man, to place his mouth where his own mouth had just been. It warms something inside of him - or is that merely the scorching sun beating down on them?

“It is full enough,” he finally says, when it is clear that Yusuf is still waiting for an answer. He passes the waterskin back, and tries to ignore the slight brushing of their fingers as the bottle is exchanged between them. “It has been hard to see good, recently. But I am trying.”

At those words, Yusuf pins him with an indecipherable stare. “Yes, you are,” he eventually agrees.

And with that they continue onward, walking side by side.

The group walks all day, slowly but steadily making their way from Jerusalem. The extra waterskins Ismael managed to procure is the only thing that allows them to make it so far, Nicolò thinks; otherwise many of the refugees would have been overcome by thirst hours ago. Yusuf agrees, quietly telling him that they have never made it so far in his previous iterations of this day. He urges them to push onward, hoping that the further they get the less likely it will be that they are ambushed by soldiers come nightfall.

When dusk begins to descend, Nicolò takes a moment to appreciate the setting sun. He cannot remember the last time he had survived his day long enough to see it. He does not want to take the sight for granted again. He thinks that Yusuf, judging from the way his head drops back and he eyes the sky as the stars begin to emerge, feels the same way.

But they do not have infinite time to appreciate it now, for there is work to do. Camp is set up, fires are built, watches are planned. Yusuf and Nicolò take the first shift and convince the other men that as many eyes that can remain awake are needed; Yusuf is still uncertain whether they have gone far enough to avoid an ambush.

Nicolò is thankful for the paranoia, to be honest - the adrenaline helps to keep him awake. Yusuf helps as well, as they chat across the fire, but the warmth from the flames and the way the flickering firelight casts a golden hue over Yusuf’s face work together in a way that calms him. That is not what he needs right now, so he continually forces his eyes away from the other man and onto his surroundings instead.

And so it is he who notices a hint of movement in the distance, and it is he who raises the alarm.

Unfortunately it is also he, who when rushing to place himself before the refugees, takes an arrow to the throat. Nicolò cannot make a sound as blood fills his mouth, but he thinks Yusuf’s enraged shout is loud enough for the both of them.

He drops to his knees and tries to pull the arrow out, but he quickly realizes he will run out of breath before he will be able to heal from his wound. His vision already blurs around the edges, making it hard to focus, but he tries to keep his eyes on Yusuf as he engages with two soldiers and swings his scimitar with righteous fury.

Nicolò wishes he could speak, to apologize for failing, but all he can do is cough up blood. He does not feel anything but regret as he keels over and falls to the ground, and he braces himself to hear the pealing of bells once again.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Joe and Nicky’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day continues...


	8. This is the day when things fall into place

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Yusuf lets the burning rage he feels upon seeing Nicolò struck down engulf him, so much so that he ends up with a handful of soldiers’ bodies laying at his feet before he is entirely aware of what he has done. He curses himself for it, realizing he should have just let one of them finish him off so he could return back to earlier that day and begin things with Nicolò anew.

Glancing around, he sees the remaining few soldiers who attacked them are being sufficiently handled by the other able-bodied men who were guarding the camp. Making use of their distraction, he rushes over to where Nicolò fell and drops down beside him.

He places a hand on the other man’s chest, but feels no movement, no breaths moving in nor out. He peers into those strange sea-coloured eyes, but they stare lifelessly, unseeingly, back at him. And while previously he may have thought those eyes frigid and unfeeling, upon seeing them without a spark of life Yusuf now realizes how wrong his prior assumption was.

“Wake up Nicolò,” he whispers - nay, pleads - though he thinks it futile. The other man lays there dead, and though he has seen this - and been the cause of it - countless times, in this instance it shatters something deep within him.

_Foolish man_ , he thinks, shaking his head. If he had not shouted to warn the group it would have not drawn the archer’s attention towards him… But that is not his way, Yusuf now knows. He has seen Nicolò place himself in the path of harm many times now, without hesitation if it will serve to help others.

He curses silently. What is he to do now? They have made such progress, they have made it so far - and they have done so together. Is he now meant to continue on and leave his partner in this strange affliction behind? That does not feel right to him; they have spent innumerable days together now, working in concert to help the escapees flee the city. It feels unnatural to proceed without him. He would not have made it here without the other man at his side - surely that is a sign.

Yusuf sighs, but as the sounds around him of the attackers’ bodies being collected and dragged away from camp begin to filter through his heavy thoughts, he knows he cannot dally much longer. He leans over for one last glance at the man’s still face and raises his hand to it, making to close his eyelids.

It is then that Nicolò gasps loudly and sits up, his forehead knocking into Yusuf’s with considerable force as he jolts upright. Yusuf swears aloud this time, both in pain and shock, as he rears back.

“Nicolò!” he chokes out, drawing a set of confused pale eyes towards him. “You… you are back?”

“I… Yes, I think so,” comes the stuttered answer, and he is seemingly as surprised as Yusuf is. Nicolò reaches up to touch his throat before glancing around quickly, taking in the new locale in which he reawakens. “What happened?”

“The camp was attacked, and you fell. We just finished off the last of the soldiers. It has only been minutes since you… died?”

“Yes, I died,” Nicolò confirms slowly, as if he is as much corroborating it with himself as with Yusuf. “But I did not go back. We… we spent the day rescuing these people from the city, yes? We helped Aisha and her children, that happened? _Today?”_

“It did. It is still happening,” Yusuf verifies, such a sense of relief flooding through him that his body sags slightly, telling him what tension he must have been carrying that he had become all too accustomed to. He lets that relief propel him forward, and he presses his forehead to Nicolò’s in a much gentler version of their earlier collison. Because he is still trying to come to terms with this development he feels he has to say the obvious out loud, as if speaking the words will more strongly cement them in reality. “You have not gone back.”

“That is… that is very good to hear,” Nicolò stutters slightly, before sighing in relief and gently bumping his forehead with Yusuf’s in return. “Do you think we broke the curse?”

“There you go again, priest, with your talk of curses,” Yusuf chuckles fondly, his mood now vastly improved. The only thing that had seemingly been propelling him forward through their repeated day had been hope - albeit a desperate, frantic version - but now it suddenly feels like there is a calmer, more soothing sense of hope beginning to course through him, and he dares to speak it aloud. “I think we may have broken the curse, but our gift remains. After all, you still do not stay dead. I assume the same can be said for me.”

Nicolò pulls back abruptly, eyes wide. “I will _not_ test that for you,” he insists.

Yusuf has to marvel at the difference a day - or hundreds of days? - has made. At the beginning of this ordeal Nicolò would have jumped at the chance. But now Yusuf feels no doubt when he replies, “I did not think you would.”

Pulling a dagger from his waist, Yusuf drags it quickly across his palm. Both men watch intently as it bleeds, but within a few moments it heals. They look back up at each other and smile.

Though he would like nothing more than to remain and bask in this quiet moment of peace and success, Yusuf’s attention is drawn to movement out of the corner of his eye and he remembers that they are amongst others who cannot know of their unnatural ability. That Nicolò’s neck is covered in blood will do nothing to allay any suspicions, so he rises and says, “Wait here.”

He finds a rag and a waterskin with some remaining drops. He dampens the cloth and wipes the evidence of Nicolò’s fatal wound away from his throat. “If anyone asks, you were not shot. You were simply stunned by a hit and just woke,” he instructs with a whisper, but they do not have to worry. The other men had all been too busy defending themselves and the camp to notice Nicolò fall - or perhaps they simply did not care about the fate of their odd pale companion. Whatever the reason for the lack of scrutiny, as the others finish clearing the enemy corpses from the area nobody spares so much as a second glance towards him.

After helping to secure the camp and the perimeter, they wordlessly agree to sit by the campfire rather than spread out bedrolls. They settle beside each other now, providing further opportunity to talk without others able to overhear their words.

“I know you thought this a curse, and perhaps part of it was. But I also think this can be a gift,” Yusuf begins, speaking quietly but firmly. “Look around us - these people would not be alive if it were not for whatever it is that renders us incapable of dying. We were given many chances to help them, and were at last able to do so.”

“I will not dispute that,” Nicolò responds, after a pause. “What I dispute is that I would be deemed worthy of such a gift.”

“ _We_ have been deemed worthy, Nicolò,” Yusuf quickly corrects him. “I do not think we can speak in the singular. Have you not come to realize that we are both in this? That the only way we were able to save these people and leave the city has been together? I think that was the lesson we were meant to learn in order to break from our never-ending day - that we had to be together.”

Nicolò’s gaze focuses on the fire for an uncomfortably indeterminable length of time before he finally nods. “Perhaps you are right. We tried many ways, and the only success we found was when we were side by side.”

“Exactly, as if we were meant to walk that path all along.”

“...Like destiny?” Nicolò wonders, testing the word on his tongue as if he is uncertain it is the correct one.

“Call it what you will,” Yusuf shrugs. “Right now I am unconcerned with what name to put to it.” The poet in him wants to laugh at his words, but at this moment, after their struggles, he knows it is the actions, and the results, that matter more than what they can settle on calling it.

“I would like to agree with you…” Nicolò sighs, still looking intently into the fire.

“What is stopping you?”

“One more test, perhaps. I have died and woken without returning in time, but what of sleep?” the other man wonders hesitantly, as though he does not want to consider any options that would mar their seeming success. “If you recall, falling asleep would send us back in time as well.”

“Yes, you are correct,” Yusuf realizes, mentally chastising himself for forgetting that key point. In his defense, it has been many reawakenings since he had made it so far as to actually fall asleep in the night. “Then let us test this as well.”

He rises, making to head to his bedroll, but Nicolò quickly reaches out and grabs his arm. “You wish to be the one to attempt this? What if you are sent back?” he cries anxiously.

“I am willing to take the chance,” Yusuf says, his mind made up. “You just died without knowing if you were throwing this day away; it is my turn to take on such a risk.”

“You do not have to take the risk alone,” Nicolò presses, his eyes boring into Yusuf’s with worry and intensity. “I will join you.”

His brow furrows slightly. “You do not have to do that,” Yusuf argues.

“I do,” Nicolò insists. “What would you have me do otherwise? If you do not wake, if you go back and leave me here in this time, what then? We must do this together.”

The fact that this may be an opportunity to cut the strings of whatever force has intertwined them does in fact cross Yusuf’s mind, and is dismissed just as quickly. It does not escape him that his compatriot is disregarding the chance as well. He decides to contemplate this in more detail at a later time. 

“Very well,” he finally nods, before attempting to lighten the tense mood that has befallen them by adding slyly, “...You do not have to lie to me, you know, and create some excuse. I know very well that you are tired and wish to sleep yourself.”

Nicolò blinks owlishly, and then, to Yusuf’s surprise, gives a quiet snort. “Ah, you have caught on to my plan.”

He does not say anything further as Yusuf goes to gather two bedrolls, but does appear mollified when he brings them both closer to the fire. 

“Goodnight, Nicolò,” Yusuf murmurs, laying himself out and trying to will his body to a state of calm and restfulness. He had thought it would be difficult after so long spent constantly alert, but once he is horizontal it is as if his body realizes it has been given permission to release some of the strain it had been under. He feels drowsiness come to claim him, and his eyes drift shut.

“Sleep well,” Nicolò whispers, laid out beside him. It could perhaps be considered a parody of their usual positions waking up beside each other on the battlefield - only now they are closer, their weapons sheathed, but they still turn to each other. They both clearly share the idea of each other being the last thing they see before they let slumber take them. “I will see you when I wake.”

“Yes, you will,” Yusuf promises, knowing it is an oath he will be able to keep - one way or the other. He knows which way would be vastly preferable, and he sends up a quick prayer to Allah before he falls into a deep sleep.

He dreams of the women again. They are still on horseback, though this time they are in battle, wielding their weapons with brutal efficiency. He observes the fluid strokes of the taller one’s strangely-shaped axe as she dispatches the soldiers foolish enough to attempt to point their weapons in her direction. None of them come close to striking her, for she is faster than they are and more economical in her movements, not wasting so much a single swing. Moreover, she does not need to turn her head and guard her back, for her companion is there with her bow, sending arrow after arrow into the bodies of those who think to take advantage of an undefended angle. 

It is an impressive partnership, Yusuf thinks with what may be envy. But part of him also whispers that he can have such an alliance as well; is this not what he and Nicolò managed to achieve when they joined forces towards a common goal? It is a comforting thought, and one that permeates and reassures him as he continues to dream.

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

When he begins to wake, he keeps his eyes closed and first merely listens. He realizes he is unconsciously holding his breath as he waits for the peal of bells - but when nothing comes, he exhales and slowly opens his eyes.

He is greeted by the sight of Nicolò still beside him, his pale eyes watching him carefully. “You are back,” he says, the tight clench of his jaw easing slightly with his relief. 

“ _We_ are back,” Yusuf corrects with a wry smile, before hoisting himself to a sitting position. “And it sounds as if you missed me.” 

That prompts another brief huff of amusement from Nicolò (a sound which is beginning to delight Yusuf). “I am only happy that your snoring has ceased,” he retorts.

Looking around, Yusuf takes in the sight of the camp and its inhabitants beginning to rouse as the morning light looms over the horizon. He has never considered himself one for early mornings, but the sight of a new day finally beginning is one he thinks he will no longer take for granted.

He indulges in the sun’s pale glow for a few moments before turning back to the other man and asking, “I think your test is passed. Can we say now that the curse is broken?”

“I believe so,” Nicolò says, the corners of his mouth beginning to twitch with the smallest of smiles. Then one corner twists wryly as he blithely adds, “Unless it has simply shifted with us, and we will now find ourselves reliving _this_ new day again and again.”

Yusuf blinks at his words, startled - is the man joking? It surely seems that way, and finally he gives himself permission to throw his head back and release a full laugh. “Oh Nicolò, I will make an optimist of you yet!” he exclaims, before rising to his feet and extending his hand. “It _is_ a new day - we will have to see what it brings. But I believe we will emerge victorious if we face it together.”

“Yes,” Nicolò nods, his pale eyes wide - but he does not hesitate as he reaches out to accept the hand offered to him. “As we are clearly meant to.”

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

Though Nicolò had intended it as a dry joke, it was perhaps an unwise thought to put voice to - for the notion that the pair could suddenly find themselves trapped in reliving _another_ day does become somewhat of a worry for both men. It remains a constant source of apprehension during their earliest days of travelling together - would they lay down to sleep and wake to find that time had passed normally, or would they awaken earlier that same day? Or even worse - a thought that had passed through the minds of them both, though neither shared it (despite sharing everything else) - would they wake days or weeks or years earlier, back on the day they had first met?

But as time passes as it should and the number of deaths and reawakenings they endure grows (despite their best efforts), their fears ease. They reawaken normally - or at least, normally for _them_ , for who else can claim that rousing from death is normal? Neither can say the fear fully disappears, but as the years march on and their relived day becomes part of the ever-distant past, the worry becomes more manageable. After all, they both reason, even if they are to be once again afflicted with a never-ending day, they know they will be facing it together. They know now that leaving together, and succeeding together, and coming together, is inevitable. It always was, and always will be.

They have no complaints on this score.

So instead they focus on the present and the future, putting their talents and skills to use. They guard caravans, they clear villages of bandits, they take on any and all odd jobs that allow them to fill their purse with coin and travel, to where they guess the women they see in their shared dreams are.

By the time they finally meet the pair in Constantinople, the strange day from many years prior has become somewhat of an afterthought; a strange story sometimes referred to, but no longer a sword hanging over their heads. Indeed, it comes up in conversation rather innocuously when the new foursome sits together in a secluded corner of an inn and begin to become acquainted with each other.

“The dreams will stop now that we have met,” Andromache explains to the men. “They are meant to help us find each other.”

“I see,” Nicolò muses thoughtfully, before Yusuf pipes up to ask, “And what of reliving a day - is that meant to help as well?”

“What?” Quynh questions, a confused look coming over her face.

“Did you two also become trapped in the day you first met?” he wonders. “Will we all become trapped in _this_ day?”

Quynh looks over to Andromache beside her, as if she thinks she is mistranslating their words. The other woman looks suspiciously at the mugs of ale in front of the men as if attempting to gauge their state of inebriation. “What do you mean?”

Yusuf explains briefly - or as briefly as one can condense what must have been hundreds of days - that while they certainly needed no help in finding each other, they did require some help in staying with each other. This tale only results in twin expressions of bewilderment spreading across the women’s faces.

“That certainly never happened to us,” says Andromache, taking a long drink.

“Though we never spent days killing each other,” Quynh points out. “I do not think we needed the extra push to know we were not meant to be alone.”

“Well, clearly we must not be as smart as the two of you then,” Yusuf chuckles, raising his glass to the two women before turning to Nicolò with a fond smile. “It may have taken us some time, but we figured it out eventually.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nicolò says, that teasing twist to his lips that Yusuf has come to adore taking up residence in the corner of his mouth. “I knew the very day we met that we were meant to be together.”

Yusuf laughs in delight at the well-worn argument between them. “Oh yes, tell me - when was this, on the fifth or the fiftieth iteration?” he prods, knowing neither of them can say with certainty just how many times they had relieved their day nor on what pass their feelings began to change (though each insists they were the first to come to the realization).

“It _was_ still the same day we met, so I do not think Quynh can disparage us for taking too long,” Nicolò states, no longer trying to hide his smile as Quynh cries “Semantics!” and tosses up her hands. Andromache merely rolls her eyes at the antics around her, even moreso when Nicolò grasps Yusuf’s hand and states, with conviction, “No - destiny.”

☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾ ☉ ☽☉☾

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is, their day is finally done. Phew! 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this. This was definitely a case where an idea for a fic grabbed me and basically forced me into writing it, but the execution was a bit more difficult than I’d anticipated. I hope I did it justice - if you wanted to let me know via comments and kudos, I certainly wouldn’t be opposed! 😘🥰


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